


Heathens

by eirabach



Series: Renegades [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Be Careful What You Wish For, Capital Punishment, Captain Swan Big Bang, F/M, Family Issues, Minor Character Death, Sequel, Smut, TW: Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2018-12-20 04:13:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11912982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: After the events of Renegades, Emma finds herself the reluctant monarch of a struggling Kingdom, her only advisors a mish mash of those who’ve betrayed her in the past, and her only comfort one very uncomfortable pirate.Believing her long lost parents could still be alive, Emma and Killian set out to find them and reunite them with both their daughter and their throne.Easy.Right?





	1. Past is Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Welcome all to my contribution to the 2017 Captain Swan Big Bang! Beta work by the wonderful and talented phiralovesloki and katie_dub, and with artwork by the incredible seastarved over on tumblr (come, check it out at mahstatins.tumblr.com!).
> 
> This fic is a sequel to Renegades, and this little teaser follows immediately on from chapter nine of that fic, so I'd recommend at least a passing familiarity with the events of that story before embarking on this one.
> 
> That said: Enjoy!

_Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, there lived a girl. She was as beautiful as she was miserable, made strong by years of constant hurt._

_The girl lived a life full of strife and pain, her heart grew heavy and her tears flowed hot, and many was the night she lay awake on her bed made from the cold, hard ground, and wished for better._

_She wished for a home to call her own, for a family to love her, to be wanted, and needed, and_ special.

_And one day, that wish came true._

_She found home in a hero who had long forgotten how to be heroic, found strength in her heart and magic in her soul, found those who’d abandoned her and realised she’d not needed them all along._

_She banished evil, and defeated cruelty, and the people rejoiced: a hundred thousand beaming faces chanting news of her victory by day and by night, the cry carried by pink-cheeked messengers and quarrelling bells until it had traveled through all the realms._

_“Long live the Queen! Long live the Queen!”_

_That, of course, was where the real trouble started._

–

Defeat is strange. It’s a thick, unexpected bitterness that seeps under her tongue, its sting sour in the cuts the Saviour left behind. Strange, and yet so certain. So sure. So _fated._

She’s never cared too much for fate.

Why should she? Why should she respect the whims of the blind old hags who hold the threads, who held her mother’s cruelty and her father’s helplessness in the palms of their hands before casting them over to her - an unwanted gift for the child who had everything and yet nothing at all? Why should she care for their desires when they’d dangled love before her - not once, but twice - only to cut the strings of life and let her world fall into dust?

She doesn’t. Hasn’t. Didn’t. Won’t.

Leave the fates to the Saviour, with her sea green eyes and her furrowed brow. Let her discover their vagaries.

Regina has a better idea.

The door is old, knot-worn, gaps between the half rotten boards giving glimpses of the hovel inside, and she feels warm satisfaction gather in the place where her heart should be as she knocks, once, twice, her bearing every bit that of the queen her mother ever wanted her to be. It creaks open to reveal a sliver of light that looks like victory.

She sees sea green eyes and a furrowed brow, and smiles.

“Snow,” she croons, her foot on the threshold. “Did you miss me?”


	2. Turn the Page

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever all my gratitude to my incredible betas katie-dub and phiralovesloki and to my extraordinarily talented artist, seastarved, who has made a beautiful edit set for the fic that you can find here: http://seastarved.tumblr.com/post/164639580223/heathens-by-mahstatins-after-the-events-of

In the safety of her ancestral home, in a bed as soft as clouds, she dreams of running on water, her feet skipping over the breakers as the wind whips them into a frenzy, her throat tight and salt stains on her cheeks.

She dreams of caves made of ice and rooms on fire, and Killian watching her always from doorways she can never quite reach.

She dreams of Blue, and her shrewd, cold eyes, and of the softness of a mother’s touch, and of a wind that always whispers her name.

(Not Emma, never Emma, but Saviour, Saviour, Saviour until her very heart seems to beat in time with it, her blood thrumming like laughter, and terror burning in the palms of her hands.)

“Love? Love are you alright?”

She bolts upright, Killian already kneeling at the edge of the bed, holding her damp hand in his. He’s half-dressed already although the sky isn’t yet pink, and he looks oddly innocent in the moonlight, even though his unbuttoned shirt exposes the marks she’s left on his body.

“I’m - I’m fine,” she says, willing her heart rate to calm down. “Are you going already?”

“It’s nearly dawn,” he says, apology in the brush of his lips against her knuckles. “You know I must.”

She does.

There are strange rules to this strange new world they’ve found themselves at the centre of, strange protocols, strange habits that led her to bar the bedroom window with a mesh of wood and wire after the first morning a flock of small birds had arrived, unannounced and bearing a dress Blue would have been proud to wear, and proceeded to pluck at her nightclothes with sharp beaks while she squealed indignantly and Killian laughed until he was almost sick.

Princesses like that sort of thing, Blue had said. Princesses don’t dress themselves.

“No fucking birds,” Emma had hissed at breakfast that morning as she’d plucked feathers from her hair, but that had only dissuaded Blue so much.

There are _rules_ , after all.

So now they come to dress her at dawn; a group of middle-aged women with their arms full of corsets and lace, who speak in reverential tones while casting sour glances at the red skin of her thighs. Killian always leaves before they arrive, his ears flushing pink when he mutters about appropriate behaviour and she reminds him how they’ve spent the hours of darkness.

Princesses don’t share their beds before their marriage night, as Blue likes to remind her. Princesses don’t share their beds with pirates at all.

She's not much of a princess.

Not waking up together is usually the one concession she makes to Blue’s ridiculous demands but the dream lies heavy on her still, some nagging sense of foreboding that she can’t quite place making her magic itch and her hands tremble.

“Actually,” she says, fixing a smile on her face as she pushes his shirt free of his shoulders, her magic sparking pleasantly as his eyes darken. “I have a plan.”

\--

The babbling voices from the corridor become ever more frantic as Emma turns her face into the pillows to smother her laughter, the hairs at the nape of Killian’s neck tickling at the back of her knee as she pulls him closer to where she wants him, his tongue almost frantic against her as the door begins to shudder on its hinges.

“I’m a little tied up at the moment!” she calls, her voice cracking as Killian takes her clit in his mouth and sucks hard enough to set her body arching off the bed, her wrists pulling tight against the silken rope holding them in place. “Come - come back later!”

“You have a meeting!” she hears Pinocchio warble, his voice warped by the thick wooden door and the several items of furniture she's propped in front of it. “You must be properly attired!”

She looks down, her gaze following the taut lines of her body, pausing over the bruise blooming on the rise of her breast, and sheen of her belly, before fixing on Killian’s desire-bright eyes as he winds her higher, higher, higher.

“I am,” she gasps, magic and pleasure burning through her veins until she’s practically alight. Invincible. “I _am_.”

\--

“Princess Emma? Princess Emma? Are you even listening?”

Emma blinks, and turns to the man who's addressed her with what she hopes is a gracious smile. He's an envoy from some friendly kingdom, somewhere northern and chilly judging by the amount of fur at his lapels, and he has the most incredible moustache she's ever seen, but if she's completely honest she's not heard a word he's said for the past twenty minutes.

It's hard to concentrate when there's a pirate playing footsie with you under the table, after all.

She catches a glimpse of Killian’s smug smirk as she settles herself more towards her guest. He looks down his long nose at her, his mouth twisted as though he's struggling to keep in his disapproval, and she feels her own smile turn predatory.

She's been underestimated most of her life, she knows how to deal with men like this.

“My apologies,” she begins, wracking her brain for the man's title. “I am new to the throne and it all seems so _very_ complicated.”

Killian makes a strangled choking sound from his place opposite, and his foot pauses in its journey along the skin of her inner thigh. She spares him a cutting glance that is both a warning to stop and a dare not to, and turns her most simpering smile on the man.

(It's the one she's been practicing in the cracked mirror in their bedroom, the _princess_ smile that Killian insists he hates, so much so that he ravishes it with kisses until it's red and swollen and panting his name.

The foot creeps a little higher.)

“Of course, of course, and you are yet to be crowned - I do not wish to overwhelm you, my dear, but as I was saying,” the man continues, unaware of the way her breath catches as Killian’s toes trace the crease of her hip. “If you want access to the northern trade routes, you will be expected to provide financing for their protection - we cannot be sure the Evil Queen is truly defeated.”

“We can,” Killian states baldly. “You have Princess Emma’s word on the matter.”

“With all due respect,” the man says, his mouth twisting further. “That is not much of a guarantee.”

“You doubt her word?” Killian growls, making a show of laying his hook on the table between them. “That would be unwise, _mate_.”

“I do not doubt the princess believes it to be true,” the man snaps back, glaring at Killian as though he's forgotten Emma's even in the room. “But belief will not save us if she returns.”

“Maybe it won't, but I will.” Emma pushes away from the table and stands, her skirts falling back into place just slowly enough that she sees the man’s eyes widen slightly, his moustache quivering. “I’m the Saviour,” she continues, unabashed. “That’s my job.”

“Your Highness - ” he splutters, but she holds up a hand to stop him, channeling the steely glare she’d seen so much of from Blue during her youth.

“That’s enough,” she says. “If you have any further concerns, feel free to discuss them with my steward. Otherwise I don’t think there’s much else to say, do you?”

The man hesitates just long enough for Killian to rise alongside her, his hand at her shoulder and his hook held on full display.

“I think the lady said you could leave, mate. So off you go, hmm. Chop chop.”

He nods his assent, and turns to go, but not before flicking his eyes from Killian's cold glare to Emma’s fixed expression.

“You’ve a lot to learn, your Highness,” he says, not unkindly. “I wish you every success.”

“Thank you,” Emma manages to mutter, and the door creaks shut behind him.

“Oh God,” she moans, dropping back into her chair with her head in her hands, “this is a nightmare.”

“Not necessarily, love,” Killian says, coming up behind her and resting hand and hook on her slumped shoulders. “There are other kingdoms to meet with and he wasn’t averse, not as such - ”

“They want money,” she groans, “and I don’t have any - I don’t even have walls.”

“We have _some_ walls.”

Emma turns her glare on him, scowling in displeasure, but she rests her head against his arm all the same.

“Is that supposed to be comforting?” she asks. “Because it needs some work.”

“Now that I will take on advisement,” he says, grinning as he leans over to press a kiss to the crown of her head. “Any chance I can begin my lessons? Or is your steward likely to attempt to barge in again with some terribly thrilling news about farm yields or some such?”

“You shouldn’t be so harsh on Pinocchio,” she sighs, smiling as he begins to run his fingers over her scalp and soothing the ache caused by her tight hairstyle. “He’s new to this, too, you know.”

“Aye, and a very enthusiastic student he is, too, especially where you’re concerned.”

“Jealous?” Emma scoffs. “Not very piratical of you, Captain.”

“Not much piratical about me any more,” he says, something in his voice making her twist around in her chair to face him.

“Do you miss it?” she asks, “Your ship?”

“Aye,” he says, and shrugs, unable to quite meet her eyes. “Sometimes.”

“Do you - ” she swallows hard, her own gaze flickering to the ground. “Do you want to go back?”

“Oh Swan,” he says, lifting her face to his with his thumb pressed into the dent of her chin. “Never, do you understand me? Never. Nowhere. Not without you.”

“Alright,” she says, letting her eyes fall shut as his breath skims her lips. “That’ll do.”

“For now?” he asks, and she can hear the hint of tongue in his smile, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Forever.”

He hums his delight as he brushes his nose against hers and drops the softest of kisses to her smile. “And does my queen have use of me today?”

“Not your queen yet.”

“You don’t need a fancy hat to be my queen, darling,” he says, his voice dropping lower. “All you need do is tell me how you wish me to serve you.”

“That’s a loaded question,” she says, nipping at his lower lip before leaning back with a sigh. “I think I’m going to try and do something with the throne room today. Blue is getting antsy about the number of ambassadors we’re hosting without appropriate provisions.”

“The fairy’s priorities are top-notch as usual I see,” Killian says, scowling slightly as he tucks his linen shirt into the soft velveteen trousers that had been the subject of one of Blue’s very earliest insistences.

“She’s just worried,” Emma shrugs. “We really are fucked without allies, Killian.”

“Then I’ll away to the kitchens; perhaps I can convince dear Granny not to poison those who appear amenable to us.”

Emma laughs. “Convince her to let you at the rum more like. I still don’t know how you persuaded her to come and be our _cook_ of all things.”

“T’wasn’t at my suggestion, Swan. Apparently twenty-eight years in hiding gave her plenty of time to develop her skills.”

Emma winces, sticking her tongue out in distaste. “I dread to think what her skills were like to start with then.”

“All the more reason to check on her progress,” Killian says, and leans down to press a kiss to the crown of her head. “I’ll see you later, love.”

She doesn’t tell him she loves him, but she does all the same.

\--

If you’d asked Emma what she thought royal duties entailed prior to her unexpected accession to the throne, she might have said cutting ribbons at the opening of new smithies, or dropping handkerchiefs at jousts, or terrorising innocent villagers out of their life savings at every turn.

She probably wouldn’t have included construction work, and yet, here she is.

She stands in the centre of what was once her parent's throne room, wearing the ragged dress she’d traversed half the forestry in the realms in and quite a layer of plaster dust, channeling her magic into the cracks and dips of the ceiling and hoping furiously for the best.

The castle she’s inherited is more rubble than palace. Whole wings of it are threatening to crash into the sea with the next big storm, and although she and Killian have made themselves happy enough with just their tower bedroom, the library, and the remaining kitchens, the arrival of her royal retinue had put paid to any romantic notions she might have had about living permanently in the ruins of her parents’ home.

Blue came with them, for a start, and no one cares more about image than a fairy.

“What are you doing?” Blue asks, entering the room as if summoned by Emma’s bitter thoughts. She eyes the sparking ceiling with something approaching nervousness - or as close to it as Emma has ever seen on her, anyway.

“Magic,” Emma huffs. “I’d have thought you’d recognise it.”

“You should think more positively when you use it, for one thing. The creatures will help you but not if they sense darkness in your magic.”

Emma rolls her eyes.

“If this is about those creepy birds, I’ve already told you that’s it's weird and I don't like it. It’s bad enough having strange women come braid my hair, never mind being dressed by owls. And anyway, I’ve never seen one who could plaster.”

“And you can?” Blue shakes her head disapprovingly. “You do remember, don’t you Emma, that all magic comes with a price?”

“Yeah,” Emma scoffs, wiping the back of her hand over her flushed face. “So does masonry. I don’t see _you_ putting your hands in your pockets to pay for it.”

“Perhaps this is to be yet another impasse.” Blue says smoothly, daintily rushing an errant flake of paint from her hair. “And I don’t have pockets.”

“No, of course you don’t. How foolish of me. You might accidentally be useful if you did.”

“Ah,” says Blue, folding her hands in front of her skirt. “I see.”

“Do you?” Emma curls her fingers into fists, and spins on her heel to face the fairy. “Because I’m not sure that you _do_ , exactly.”

Blue inclines her head as if considering the possibility.

“Oh really?”

“Yes, _really_ ,” Emma spits. “I have no idea what I'm doing, and whose fault is that? How many years did I live with you before you decided I needed to _find myself_? Exactly how many lessons in taxation management, or warfare, or dinner table etiquette did you bother with in that time?”

“There were rather more pressing things, Emma - ”

“Oh, I’m sure there were! I’m sure you had plenty of meetings about how long you should leave me starving in the woods for, or how many rhinestones it’s possible to stitch to one bodice, or which mass murdering psychopath to make a deal with that week - ”

“Emma - “

“Dont  _Emma_ me! You shouldn’t even be here, I don’t know what - ”

“ _Emma._ ”

Blue points to the ceiling, which has long since stopped sparking and is bulging quite alarmingly just above their heads.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Emma grunts, and closes her eyes against the flash of magic required to set it straight.

“The pirate’s growing on you,” Blue says wryly. “You ought to be careful there too, Emma.”

“I don’t want or need your opinion on my love life, Blue. Thanks all the same.”

“Maybe not, but you want my advice on ruling, do you not? Is that not what that little rant was about?”

She lifts an eyebrow, and Emma finally forces the creaking ceiling back into what she hopes is an approximation of its original location.

“Alright,” she says, turning back with her hands on her hips. “I’ll bite.”

“You are to be queen now,” Blue points out gently, as if explaining a terribly difficult concept to a rather stupid child. “Your every choice now must be for the good of your people. The son of Queen Abigail is coming here tonight. By all accounts he is a personable young man, and his kingdom’s wealth would - ”

“Be useful? Very enlightening,” Emma snorts, attempting to brush the plaster from her skirts and instead smearing it into a grey white paste. “Next you'll be telling me that grass is green and Pinocchio’s been smoking something slightly more exciting than bay leaves in that pipe of his.”

Blue snaps her mouth shut, and Emma lifts a wry eyebrow.

“I'm not an idiot, Blue.”

“I never suggested you were. But Emma, please consider what I’m telling you. The pirate - ”

“Killian,” Emma states, her jaw tight. “His name is Killian.”

“Killian, then,” Blue acquiesces. “He's not _exactly_ the royal type.”

“Well, that explains why I like him,” says Emma, all false innocence, “because neither am I.”

“Don't be so obtuse, Emma,” the fairy snaps, and suddenly Emma feels fifteen again, bullheaded and determined and ready to run.

“Spit it out, then,” she snarls. “You still don't think Killian's good enough for me, is that it?”

“It's not _about_ you, not anymore,” the fairy’s voice becomes sharper, something otherworldly in the curl of her lip. “It's about your kingdom! Your parents would never - ”

“Don't!” Emma snaps, then, quieter: “Don't tell me what my parents would or wouldn't want for me.”

“What about what they wanted for their kingdom?” Blue says. “They didn't sacrifice their lives to see their kingdom ruled by a criminal, Emma.”

“Too late for that I'm afraid! Tell me, Blue, what would my mother think of you abandoning her child to a life where she had to steal to survive, hmm?” She turns her back on the fairy, her dismissal clear. “I don't think Killian should be cast as the bad guy in that story, do you?”

“Just be careful, Emma,” Blue says gently. “That’s all I ask.”

“I don’t need to be,” Emma grumbles. “Not with him.”

“So you keep telling me,” Blue sighs. “But Emma, do you know what he’s doing right this moment?”

Emma scowls over her shoulder. “Do I need to?”

Blue takes a deep breath, as if considering whether to speak, her expression taking on a sort of pitying concern that makes Emma's blood run cold.

“Emma, some of the staff...”

Something heavy and leaden drops into her stomach, her heart skipping a beat, then two, as Blue twists her face into an approximation of compassion.

“Some of the staff what?”

“He’s been spending a lot of time in the kitchens - there have been some - complaints…”

“About his cooking?” Emma spits out a laugh. “Have they _tasted_ Granny’s?”

“About his behaviour - with the kitchen girls - Emma, I - ”

“Get out.”

She keeps her face neutral, her tone steady, but her stomach roils and her blood thunders in her ears as Blue looks sadly to the floor.

“I didn’t want to tell you, Emma - ”

_Liar,_ hisses her magic. _Liar, liar, liar._

“I said, get _out_!” she roars, fury taking over as magic licks down her spine even though her knees threaten to buckle beneath her. “How dare you - how _dare -_ ”

She doesn’t even see Blue leave, not really, her vision blurring behind a curtain of hot, angry tears. Killian wouldn’t. Killian would _never_.

(Killian has, whispers her traitorous mind. Killian has and Killian will. Once a pirate always a pirate. Once a pirate - )

She wills her magic back from where it’s fizzing in her bones, her anger making it wilder and harder to control, and scrubs her fist over her eyes. She’s probably dislodged most of the kohl her ladies-in-waiting so carefully applied this morning, but she can’t bring herself to care, storming off down the corridors of the palace until she reaches the steamy, garlic-scented entrance to the kitchens.

Granny is stood at one end of the long range, frowning as she stirs at the contents of a large cauldron. At the table that runs the length of the room, two young kitchen girls are kneading bread, both in paroxysms of giggles at something or other, while Killian leans casually against the table edge, his face split with a wide grin and his eyebrows somewhere near his hairline.

“And _then_ I said - ” he says before he catches sight of Emma and immediately stands up straighter, the louche grin softening into something that makes her heart clench and her eyes itch. “Your Highness!”

He drops into a bow, and the kitchen girls cast quick, nervous glances at each other before offering awkward curtseys of their own. Granny looks up from her pot just long enough to send Emma a strained sort of smile before peering back into its depths.

“Captain Jones,” she says, hoping her voice doesn’t tremble over the unfamiliar use of his title. “Ladies. How are things?”

Killian’s dark brows furrow in concern, his eyes flicking to where she folds her hands tightly in front of her skirts, but it’s Granny who speaks first.

“They’d do better without that bloody fairy sticking her nose in every twenty minutes. The flagrant disrespect! Prince James is allergic to pumpkin, Granny. Prince James doesn’t care for chicken, Granny. Tell me, your Majesty. What does Prince James eat? Dust? Coal? In my day - ”

“She’s making butternut soup,” Killian interrupts, nodding his head to where Granny is still muttering under her breath. “Best not interrupt her magic.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Emma asks lowly, shooting a glare at the kitchen girls as they begin to titter. “Can I - can we - have a word?”

“Of course,” Killian is immediately at her side, that soft, soft smile setting her heart at ease even as she continues watching the kitchen girls out of the corner of her eye. “Anything my queen desires.”

His hand hovers above her hip, as though waiting for permission to settle, and she can feel the heat of the kitchen girls’ glowers against the side of her face.

“I desire a word,” she says, loudly enough for them all to hear, and then, lower: “The rest can wait.”

\--

It doesn’t.

She’s crushed up against the door of the closest storage room, her left foot precariously perched on a bag of flour as Killian rucks her skirt up around her waist and she presses her right heel into his exposed backside.

“Not that I’m complaining, love,” he gasps as she sucks a mark - her mark - into the skin of his throat, her hand sliding between them to guide him over her sensitive flesh. “But what’s brought this on?”

“Can’t a girl - _fuck._ ” The tip of him teases at her entrance and she shifts to take him in fully, swallowing his groan as he shifts his hand and hook to hold her more tightly as he begins to move. “Can’t a girl take what she wants, now and then?”

“A girl certainly can,” he growls against her mouth as he switches the angle. “You'll hear no complaints from me.”

Her breath comes in hot, hard gasps as she clings to his shoulders, shoving the material of his shirt down his arms until she can get a better grip. Then she spots it.

Along the line of his left collarbone is a single, pink scratch, and it stops her cold, her body going slack then rigid in his grip the urge to run kicks in.

“Emma?” he stops immediately, his expression pure concern as he follows the line of her stare. “Emma, what’s wrong?”

“That’s - ” she pauses, licking her suddenly dry lips, and runs her finger against the slightly raised line. “What’s that?”

Killian laughs, the movement jostling her against the door. “It’s a scratch, love.”

“How’d you get it?” she asks, and there’s something in her voice that even she doesn’t recognise. Killian lowers her gently to the ground, letting himself slip from her as she does so, and then tucks himself back into his trousers.

“Granny caught me going for a refill and walloped me,” he says. “Now, what’s this actually about, Emma?”

She shakes her head, reaching for his softening cock until he grabs for her wrist, stopping her with a shake of his head.

“Tell me what the matter is,” he says gravely, and Emma looks to the floor, considers her options, and goes for what she hopes is the one least likely to lead to an argument.

“This Prince James,” she says. “I think Blue wants to… set us up.”

“ _What_?” Killian barks, grinning as he lifts her chin with his hook. “And you’re letting _that_ bother you?”

“It doesn’t bother you?” she snaps in return, smoothing her skirts and attempting to ignore the ache between her thighs.

Killian stops smiling, his expression colder than she’s seen it in months. “Should it?”

“Blue thinks - ”

“I do not give a single fuck what that creature thinks, Emma. Should I be worried?”

Emma deflates slightly, leaning her head back against the door. “You don’t think I’d be interested in some princeling picked out by Blue, do you?”

“No,” he says without hesitation. “I don’t. But there’s something going on here, Emma.”

“It’s nothing.” She fixes his shirt, hiding the mark under the collar and running the pad of her thumb over the dark bruise she’s left at his throat. “Did I hurt you?”

“And that’s all you’ve got to say on the matter, is it?” Her eyes snap up to Killian’s and she’s shocked to see the anger simmering behind them. “ _It’s nothing_ , and we continue as though this conversation never occurred?”

“Works for me,” Emma snaps, immediately back on the defensive.

“Fine.”

“ _Fine._ ”

He goes for the door handle first, but she still beats him to it, wrenching it open and storming off along the corridor, scattering twittering servants in her wake with little care for her rumpled appearance and loosened stays.

He doesn’t call after her, and she pretends she doesn’t care.

\--

She spends hours primping in the confines of her tower bedroom, saying nothing as her maidservant pulls her corset an inch or two tighter, and refusing to blush as another woman dabs powder over the beard burn on her chest. She chooses a red gown that she knows brings out the flush in her cheeks, and pinches her lips until they’re pink and plump and begging to be bitten. No kitchen girls will be showing _her_ up tonight. Killian won’t know what hit him.

But Killian doesn’t come and lean against her doorframe and make suggestive remarks as she rolls up her stockings. There’s no sign of him coming to sneak a kiss the moment her ladies in waiting leave, and she starts to wonder if perhaps she should have just confessed everything in the cool of the storage closet.

But it’s too late for that now, and by the time she enters the banquet room, she is as severe, cold, and unhappy as the queen Blue desires her to be.

Prince James, on the other hand, isn’t quite what was promised.

He’s pleasant enough, shaking Emma’s hand and congratulating her brightly on the return of her birthright, but that’s really where the appeal ends. He’s pale and a little skinny, and he has a constant drip from his nose that makes him sniff loudly at regular intervals and sets Emma’s teeth on edge. He slurps at his soup and picks at his bread, and although Emma can’t exactly blame him for being less than enthralled with Granny’s cooking, every bite he struggles to swallow takes her back to those painful years she spent begging for every morsel, her anger at his ingratitude just another reminder of how very unroyal she really is.

And above it all is the sting of the empty chair at her right, and the matching ache in her heart.

“Are we expecting someone?” Prince James finally asks after her tenth lingering glance at the space beside her. “I had heard there was a… sailor who had assisted you on your journey?”

On the other side of the table, Blue drops her soup spoon with a clatter.

“That's Captain, mate. And I'm no one's assistant.”

Killian saunters in, leading the two kitchen maids who are struggling to balance some charred and mysterious meat product on the platter between them, and wearing his old leather coat - the one that Blue had demanded be replaced by softer, lighter, more _princely_ attire. Tonight, he is no prince, instead every inch the feared pirate captain as he slides into the empty seat and turns to Prince James with a smile that screams danger.

“Have we met?”

Prince James dabs at his nose with his handkerchief, appearing somewhat discombobulated by Killian’s looming presence.

“No, I - I don’t believe - ”

“No I'm quite sure… You’re James!” Killian laughs, slamming his hook down on the table hard enough for soup to slop over the side of Emma’s bowl. “Abigail and Frederick’s lad! Why last time I saw you you were but a whippersnapper of a midshipman!”

“I don’t - that is - I uh,” James mutters, and Emma’s eyes widen as she sees the way his hands shake. “I’m afraid I don’t remember having the pleasure.”

Killian’s grin grows even wider, his eyes flashing.

“Well you wouldn’t, lad. There wasn’t much pleasure involved. Not for your lot anyhow. I, however, did rather well out of the experience.”

“ _Captain_ ,” Blue snaps, her icy glare fixed across the table.

Killian hums, pure wickedness in the innocent pursing of his lips. “That is what they call me, fairy.”

“Will you - ” Emma gestures to the platter that the girls have left on the table. It's smoking lightly. “Um, carve? Prince James?”

Prince James nods quickly, colour returning to his face as he arms himself with the large knife. “Delighted.”

The four of them eat, or attempt to eat, in less than companionable silence. Prince James keeps his head down to avoid the heated glares Blue is sending Killian’s way, and Killian doesn’t look at Emma at all. It’s awful. The dry meat tastes like sawdust in Emma’s mouth as she forces bite after bite down, her stomach protesting uncomfortably - too full of nerves to deal with the inedible. By the time the kitchen girls have returned to deliver the dessert - something alarmingly lilac and glowing softly - she’s had enough.

“Please excuse me,” she says, standing up and pushing her chair away from the table. “I feel quite unwell. I’m afraid - ”

“Oh! No, no, no!” Prince James stands also, shaking her hand in both of his. “Do not apologise, your Highness. I too find myself in need of - er - ” his eyes flick to where Killian is watching him intently. “Some fresh air.”

“Perhaps some fresh air is what you need, Emma,” suggests Blue. “You could take Prince James for a turn about the - ”

“ _No!_ ”

“Gods no!”

Emma isn’t sure whether she or Prince James sound more horrified at the prospect, and she’s sure Blue grinds her teeth in frustration.

“I really would prefer to rest,” Emma mutters, keeping her face turned away from Killian. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Prince James says, pure relief in his tone as he pumps her hand again for good measure.

Blue nods shortly.

Killian says nothing at all.

\--

Her dreams are even stranger that night. Darker. Colder.

She dreams of the woods she was raised in, ash in her mouth and splinters in her feet as she hides from a thing she cannot see.

She dreams of salt on her lips and grit in her eyes, of smoke that swallows her whole, and always, always the voice.

_Saviour, Saviour, Saviour._

The trees laugh, their leaves jangling like steel blades and their trunks weeping red, and when she wakes up, she’s alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed, please do let me know! Also on tumblr as mahstatins.
> 
> Posting will be every Saturday as close to 6pm GMT as I can manage!


	3. Needle in the Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again all love and gratitude to phiralovesloki and katie-dub! Hope you enjoy!

She doesn’t bother to wait for her maidservants the next morning, marching off down the hallway to the antechamber they’ve been using as a council chamber with her hair loose around her shoulders and a face fierce as thunder.

“We need to talk,” she announces, slamming the door behind her with such force that Killian sways precariously on the chair he’s clearly spent the night in, blinking blearily up at her from under a cocoon of leather that has been hastily pressed into service as a blanket.

“Good morning to you, too, love.”

She rolls her eyes at his bitter tone, shoving his feet off the table as she pulls out a chair of her own, dropping into it heavily and glaring at him.

“I hate this.”

“How specific.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” Killian sighs, stretching so that his coat falls to the floor, and she catches the tell-tale glint of his hook. He rarely wears it to sleep now, not in the comfort of their own bed, and it speaks a little as to how comfortable his own rest has been. “Because honestly, Swan, I’m not sure what’s been going on around here lately.”

“That makes two of us,” Emma sighs, and takes his hook in her hand, squeezing until the cool metal grows warm in her palm and Killian’s drawn face softens into a smile. “I want out.”

The smile drops, the colour draining from Killian’s face as he leans back with such sudden force that only her death grip on his hook prevents him bolting across the room.

“I see.”

“No!” She shakes her head, bringing her other hand up to settle at his cheek. “No, Killian, not like that. Not _us_. This place. This _life_. We’re not made for it.”

“I think you’ll find you are, love,” Killian says gently, though his colour has yet to return. “I certainly was not, it’s true, but you were born for this.”

“Maybe. But I wasn’t raised for it, I didn’t _live_ it. I don’t - I don’t even want it.”

“What are you planning to do?” Killian laughs. “Run away?”

Emma looks down at the floor, afraid to see his face when she hears his sharp intake of breath.

“Darling, no. That’s not you.”

She scuffs her foot along the floor, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the amount of dust and grime she dislodges.

“Isn’t it? I’ve spent half my life running away; I’m good at it. You’re good at it too. We could,” she risks a glance up, “try it together?”

Killian lifts an eyebrow, but she can see that he’s not entirely opposed to the idea by the way his fingers twitch as though reaching for a sword he now rarely carries.

“And your people?” he asks. “What happens to them?”

Emma smiles, small and secretive.

“Well, about that. I’ve had an idea.”

–

“No,” Blue snaps, slapping her palms on the tabletop. “No, I forbid it.”

“It’s far, far too dangerous, your Highness,” pleads Pinocchio.

“Not to mention ill-fated,” sniffs Prince James, who has taken the council seat furthest from where Emma sits with her back straight and head high. Killian stands at her shoulder having once again re-donned his old pirate coat and looking like some leather-bound knight, scowling at the other man.  “If your parents were still alive, surely they would have returned to their kingdom by now - to you.”

“Regina didn’t kill them,” Emma says, her voice steady despite the jab she feels in her heart at James’ words. “She had no reason to lie.”

“She had every reason to lie!” bellows Blue. “That is what she _does_ , Emma!”

“And whose word do I have for that? Yours?” Emma scoffs. “If there’s any chance - ”

“Where are you planning to look?” asks Granny, looking totally at home in the chair Killian has given up for her, her wizened hands folded neatly on the table. “Do you have a starting place in mind?”

“Well,” Emma pauses, the stares of the council members lying heavy on her as she considers Granny’s words. “Not really.”

Blue drops her head into her hands. “So you intend to leave your kingdom unprotected while you wander the woods looking for people who may or may not exist.”

“That’s the long and the short of it,” Pinocchio says, horrified. “Emma, you _can’t_.”

“That’s your future queen you’re talking to, mate,” snarls Killian, his hand steady on Emma’s shoulder. “So I’d watch your tone.”

“And I wouldn’t be leaving it undefended,” Emma adds. “I’d be leaving it with _you_. Lets face it, I’m not the princess you were promised. There’s not going to be weeping in the streets.”

“And anyway,” Kilian adds. “I may have a few contacts that could help.”

“Oh you do, do you?” spits Blue. “I should have known. Well, have your misbegotten little adventure, pirate, if it pleases you, but I’d thank you _not_ to drag her Highness - ”

“Wait, hold on,” Emma snaps, holding her hand up. “You don’t speak for me, Blue. I make my own choices - and _this_ is my choice. Killian and I - ”

“Say nothing more,” says Blue, her face fixed in displeasure. “The choice is yours, as you say, Emma, but take care. The consequences will lie on all our heads.”

“I know that.”

Blue rises without waiting to be dismissed, far more regal than Emma could ever hope to be as she stares them down.

“I rather doubt that,” she says. “But I hope so.”

“Yeah,” Emma half breathes, the words not loud enough to be caught even by Killian’s ear. “Me too.”

–

They don’t speak as they watch the furious rustle of Blue’s skirts as she marches off down the corridor, Pinocchio tripping along helplessly in her wake, the only sound being the quiet murmur of Prince James and Granny’s private conversation back at the abandoned council table. They still don’t speak as Granny pushes her way past them, briskly patting her hands as if ridding them of something unpleasant before calling after Prince James with a cheerful “I can teach you if you like, boy!” and a meaningful wink in Emma’s direction.

Killian breaks the silence between them with a snort.

“I imagine he needs more lessons than Granny could ever hope to provide.”

“In what, exactly? Or don’t I want to know?”

“Archery, I believe. Not likely to be baking, is it?”

Emma smiles, small and a little sly. “I think you’re rather underestimating Granny, don’t you?”

Killian’s eyes go wide and then he wrinkles his nose in disgust. “Well, there’s an image I could have lived without.”

“I didn’t mean - ” Emma rolls her eyes. “Does your mind ever leave the gutter?”

“Very rarely,” Killian concedes, and drops his gaze to the floor. “Listen, Emma, about last night…”

“It’s nothing,” Emma mutters, swallowing hard against her increased heart rate. “Let’s not - let’s not talk about it right now, okay?”

“Right now, or ever?”

Emma bites her lip. The silence between them is awkward and hurts her in ways she’d long forgotten it was possible to be hurt, and she knows, logically, that Killian would never hurt her - would never do such a thing on purpose. But there’s a little bit of her, raw and vulnerable, that’s terrified that perhaps after all she’s just a lost little girl who found love and a kingdom, but won’t get to keep either of them in the end.

(Won’t get to keep them, and she’ll have no one to blame but herself.)

“Right now,” she lies. “We have bigger fish to fry.”

Killian’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but his hand still reaches for hers - warm and solid and comforting - and it’s almost enough.

“Interesting choice of words, love.”

–

“Mermaids,” she says, perched on the end of their bed watching him rummage through a trunk of clothes, all of which he tosses over his shoulder with ever more bitter mutterings about ‘Bloody princelings’ and ‘looking like a tosser’. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly, I’m afraid,” he says, emerging from the trunk with a familiar red silk vest on the point of his hook and a glint in his eye. “Still my colour?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

He closes the lid of the trunk heavily.

“What would you like me to say?” he asks, rubbing the back of his hand over his eyes. “Yes, I’m serious. Mermaids can travel incredible distances - even between realms - so if anyone has an idea of where to start looking for your parents, it’s bound to be them.”

“And you think they’ll help?”

“Ah,” Killian sits down on the truck lid and looks up at her from under a raised brow. “Now that I can make no promises about.”

“Pirate?” Emma asks wryly, and he lifts his hook in acknowledgement.

“Pirate. At the very least they may be able to tell us where to find an old… acquaintance of mine. A fairy of sorts. She owes me a favour and has a habit of knowing more than she ought.”

“You think a fairy will help? Blue doesn’t trust you.” The words seem to fall out of her mouth, almost tripping over one another as she clamours to stuff them back from whence they came. “Shit, I didn’t - ” She pauses, shrugs. “Didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

“Just going to dwell on it in silence?” Killian says, his expression unchanged. “You needn’t worry about me, darling. I’m more observant than you think, and with a thicker hide.”

“So it doesn’t bother you?”

“I think we’ve already had this conversation, Swan, and it ended poorly,” he sighs, his brows dropping into a scowl. “But as it stands, no. It does not. The only opinion that matters to me is, and has always been, yours.”

Emma smiles, the constant unsteady lurching of her heart finally soothed slightly as she leans forward to take his hand and hook in her own. “Not Blue?”

“No,” he says softly, craning his face towards her so that she can drop a kiss to the tip of his nose.

“Nor mermaids?”

“Never,” he breathes as her lips brush his. “Only you.”

Emma hums, comforted, as he pulls away with a soft smile and bright eyes.

“But,” he says. “There is another woman I’ll need in order to track down our informants.”

“Oh, is there? And who’s that?”

“Why, the Jolly Roger of course.”

“You’re kidding. How the hell are you going to find her?”

“That part’s taken care of; all I had to do was send a message out to an old friend of mine and my property is being returned.”

“Wait, you _knew_ where she was all this time?”

“I wasn’t certain, but I had  some idea, aye. I don’t spend my every waking moment hovering around the kitchens or irritating Blue you know.”

“You didn’t tell me,” she mumbles.

He lifts an eyebrow.

“I didn’t think you’d care to know.”

She winces, inclining her head in agreement as she picks at the threads of the bed sheets.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just - I’ve never had anything to lose before this. I don’t want you to think you can’t tell me stuff because you’re worried I’ll freak out.”

“Never again,” Killian says, dropping a quick kiss to the tip of her nose before standing, the red silk vest held out to her on the point of his hook. “Now, how about a touch of gentle piracy, hmm? We’ll start slowly. Fancy a pillage?”

She snatches the vest from him, rising to meet his grin with one of her own.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

–

“Are you absolutely certain about this?”

Blue’s narrow eyes flick from the tall masts of the Jolly Roger to where Emma stands beside her, armed with a cutlass and a fierce expression, her own gaze fixed on the activity on deck. Killian marches between his men, barking orders she can barely understand, the epitome of the pirate captain that she first knew.

(It fills her with some feeling she can’t quite identify - part nostalgia and part some sinking sort of fear that she daren’t examine too closely.)

“Can you even swim?”

“I’m sailing, not paddling, Blue,” Emma snipes, pushing her hair behind her ears as the sharp nip of an easterly wind catches at the ends. “I’ll be fine.”

“Because Killian is with you? He certainly _looks_ right at home,” Blue shakes her head, every inch the disapproving foster mother she hasn’t been for a decade or more. “I wish you’d listen to me.”

“Done enough of that,” Emma says shortly. “Unless you want to discuss the running of the kingdom in my absence for the what - fiftieth time? Otherwise, a simple ‘good luck’ will do.”

“I wish you every success, Emma,” the fairy says. “I truly do.”

“I’m sure that will sustain us grandly on our voyage,” Killian says as he drops from the gangplank to join them on the docks. “Who needs fresh water and a following wind with a fairy godmother on your side?”

“Her side,” snips Blue. “Not yours.”

“I was rather under the impression they were the same thing, Lady Blue,” Killian says, politeness itself as he bows to the fairy. Emma purses her lips tightly to avoid a snigger escaping as he offers Blue his most winning smile.

Blue’s face twitches before she steps back with a cool, “Let us hope so, Captain. For all our sakes.”

Killian doesn’t bother to answer her, instead turning to Emma and nodding at the trunk at her feet.

“Ready, love? The wind’s changing and the tide won’t wait.”

Emma takes a deep breath, concentrating on the feel of the trunk’s rope handles against her sweaty palms, and glances back one final time at the castle that rises from the dockside.

Blue hovers at the edge of her vision, a half blurred half forgotten thing already as Emma steps forward and allows Killian to escort her up the gangplank.

“As I’ll ever be.”

The bustling activity stops as soon as Killian’s boot hits the deck, every man pausing in his duties as a short man with black hair and even blacker teeth bellows a “Captain on deck!”

Emma’s spent years amongst the less salubrious denziens of the Enchanted Forest - has been one herself if you were to ask the opinion of those who’d found themselves the unfortunate victims of her excellent pickpocketing skills - but even she balks slightly at the motley crew that Killian has chosen for the Jolly Roger.

They’re an ugly bunch, with skin cracked like old leather,  and scars that  wind, rope-like, around their twisted limbs. They shift  to keep their balance on deck, their faces turned to Killian even as their eyes seem to wander, their dry lips parting as their stares land on Emma.

“Listen up, you filthy lot,” barks Killian, his hand on the hilt of his cutlass and his hook prominently displayed as he steps forward. “The lady here is our guest and our financier on this little trip, so we’ll be treating her nicely, savvy?”

A little hum runs through the crowd, and Emma fights the urge to wrap her coat tighter round herself instead choosing to step forward to stand at Killian’s side, her chin held high as she stares down a man with biceps like barrels and a leer that makes her skin crawl.

“Real nice,” he says, his lip curling to reveal a gaping hole where his teeth should be. “Not a problem, Captain.”

Killian says nothing, but Emma can feel the way he tenses next to her, the implicit threat making his fingers twitch against his sword.

“Lower the flag,” he half hisses, half demands. “We sail for Misthaven now.”

The muttering grows louder, the men seeming to sway closer, a great, dark wall of feral humanity barely restrained by Killian’s fierce glare.

“They said he’d gone soft,” says one, just loud enough for Killian to hear.

There’s a flash of steel, a sudden parting of the sea of men, and the unfortunate soul finds himself held two feet from the ground, unable to struggle free thanks to the point of his Captain’s hook at his throat.

“Something to say, lad?” Killian asks, his voice almost sweet as he turns the hook to rest squarely against the man’s jugular. “Care to repeat it, hmm?”

“No, Sir,” the man stammers, his face turning purple as Killian twists his fist tighter in the man’s collar. “Nothing, Sir.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Killian spits, “that I don’t care to sully my deck with your innards before we’ve even left port.” He drops the man, who scrambles backwards to rejoin the crew, his hands at his neck.

“We sail,” Killian snarls, “for Misthaven. Now lower that bloody flag!”

“Captain?” the short man squeaks, and Killian turns to him with ill-concealed fury.

“Do you mistake an order for a request, Mr Wilkins? Would you also like a reminder of what happens to disobedient men on my ship?”

“No, Sir,” the man - Wilkins - says, staggering backwards slightly before tugging at the boot of a scrawny man who hangs, ape-like, from the rigging. “You heard the Captain! Lower the flag.”

Killian doesn’t need to ask a third time. The crimson flag that flutters ominously from the mainmast is swiftly brought down, to be replaced by the cream and gold of Misthaven’s - of _Emma’s_ \- standard. Killian glances across to her as she watches the wind catch at it and send it flying, his face softening infinitesimally when she offers him a small smile.

“All right, love?”

“I will be,” she says softly, keeping an eye on the closest men for fear they’ll overhear her. “Where’d you find this lot?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Killian says, his jaw twitching. “Most of my original crew made themselves scarce as soon as they realised I wasn’t about to return. I had to pad out the remnants with whatever Wilkins could dredge out of the nearest rum barrel.”

“Captain?” Wilkins hovers at his elbow again, bouncing nervously from one foot to the other, “We’re ready.”

Killian mounts the steps to the helm in three strides, taking hold of the ship’s wheel and grinning as the wind catches his hair.

“All right, boys, I presume you know what to do? Weigh anchor! Make sail!”

Emma spins on the spot as the Jolly Roger begins to heave to life beneath her, dashing forward to the guardrail as the hull begins to pull away from the dockside.

“Good luck!” calls Granny, who’s frantically waving a kitchen cloth and occasionally dabbing at her eyes. “We believe in you!”

“I’ll bring them home!”  Emma shouts over the rushing of water and the creak of the wood. “I will! I promise!”

Blue says nothing. Only watches, silent and still, until the Jolly Roger reaches the open sea, and she can watch no more.

–

The seas are calm enough to begin with, the gentle creak of the Jolly Roger’s boards soothing any apprehension Emma might be feeling - at least, any regarding the ocean’s whims. The crew, on the other hand, she’s far from sure about.

They scurry about at the behest of Mr Wilkins, their faces mainly turned to their tasks, but every now and then she catches a beady eye, a knowing sort of smirk, and her hands clench involuntarily. She’s known plenty of men like this over the years - known, and fought, and beaten - but here she’s in their territory, her knees ever so slightly unsteady as the ship picks up speed, her heart skipping a beat as the mainsail catches the wind and they lurch over the crest of a wave.

No, the crew she does not care for. But then, there’s Killian.

Killian is beautiful here, she realises, his face flushed from the biting wind, his eyes bright and his body held firm and solid against the onslaught of the rolling swell.

Not that he isn’t always a sight to behold, he’s never failed to make her breath catch in her thrust and her blood sing, but there’s something about the wildness of the open ocean that makes him seem almost ethereal, as though he is made to be as much a part of wave and wind as the Jolly Roger herself.

He’s a man in his element again, a fact that delights and hurts her in almost equal measure. She’s never felt at home anywhere, not in the way Killian feels at home in the ocean. She’s never walked any floor on dry land with the confidence he strides over the shifting deck of his ship.

She doesn’t begrudge him it, or at least she doesn’t mean to.

She just wishes it didn’t frighten her so much.

Emma is not an experienced sailor - her past visits to the Jolly Roger have always been brief, anchored affairs - so it doesn’t take long after the wind begins to pick up and the clouds begin to scud darkly across the sky before her confidence starts fading, her steps becoming gradually more unsteady under the snide glares of the crew.

Eventually she slips, losing her footing on the drizzle slick deck, her chilled fingers scrabbling for purchase against the wood.

“Oh, so that’s the way you like it is it, lass?”

Emma glares up through her damp hair into the sneering face of the man from earlier. His arms are folded across his chest as though to emphasise his brutish size, the tip of his boot within touching distance of her fingers.

“Need a hand?” he coos.

“Is this you helping me up?” she spits.

“Not likely,” he says, tilting his head meaningfully for a better angle down her shirt. “I like the view.”

“Second watch!” cries Mr Wilkins. “Second watch to stations!”

There’s a flutter of activity as the men change shifts, the large man offering Emma a last, vicious smile as he lumbers away, and then there’s a warm hand at her elbow and Killian is pulling her into his arms.

“Alright there, love?” he asks lowly, hiding his concern from the rest of the crew.

“Yeah,” she mutters. “Just dandy. Did I ever tell you I don’t like boats?”

“Blasphemy,” he says cheerfully, tucking her into his side as she shivers. “And I told you love, she’s a _ship_.”

“Fine, whatever. Does the _ship_ have somewhere dry and warm? Preferably with a bed,” she wrinkles her nose as the large man passes by again, “and a _lock_.”

“You know she does,” Killian murmurs. His smile is warm against her hair, and she struggles against the rising wave of frustration his happiness brings. “Shall we make ourselves scarce, love?”

“Yes, please,” she grumbles, sparing a last cutting glance for her tormentor and turning on her heel for the hatch. “We need to talk.”

“Sounds like I’m in for a pleasant little chat then,” Killian sighs, lifting the hatch before following her down into the bowels of the ship. “If you’re planning on yelling at me, can you at least wait until I’ve locked the door? A man has a reputation to protect, after all.”

–

The captain’s quarters are much as she remembers them, lit only by the flickering of oil lamps and the occasional flash of moonlight as the ship rises on the crest of a wave. The bunk is missing the silken sheets she remembers, but it’s still as narrow and as tempting as ever, especially when Killian makes his way past her, kicking a safe closed as he does so, and perches himself on the edge of it, the pirate melting away as he looks up at her through his lashes.

“Have at it then, love,” he says wryly. “Just us, now.”

“I don’t know why you always think I’m going to yell at you,” she sighs, running the flat of her palm over a wrinkled map that’s held flat on the desk only by the half dozen ink bottles and blades that frame it. “We’re a team, remember?”

“Aye,” he agrees. “But you’re an intelligent lass, Swan. I’m waiting for you to figure me out.”

Blue’s face rears up in her mind’s eye for a moment, her pursed lips and her scowl and her constant dire warnings, but then Emma shakes her head sharply and the image disappears.

“You’re not half as mysterious as you’d like to think,” she says, smiling as she comes to sit next to him, the mattress tilting under their combined weight.

“Men are simple creatures,” Killian agrees, his hand sliding over the cloth of her breeches and coming to settle at the crease of her hip. She bats it away, laughing when he pouts in dismay and pulling his hand back to brush a kiss against his knuckles.

“You can say that again. Wilkins would have been better leaving them in the rum barrel where he found them.”

Killian groans, dropping back to rest on his elbows as he stares up at the deck above.

“I know. I’m not delighted by them myself, but we need a crew and this truly is the best Wilkins could come up with on short notice. On my honour, I never thought I’d miss Smee.”

Emma blinks, and the room changes. Suddenly she’s standing in the doorway again watching as the Evil Queen’s knights gut and plunder their way through Killian’s crew, through Killian’s _home_.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and Killian looks up, his brow furrowed.

“Why?”

_Because you lost your crew. Because it’s my fault. Because I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong and never, ever learned to listen. Because I love you. Because I won’t tell you that. Because I can’t. Because. Because. Because._

_Because I don’t think you’ll choose me, in the end._

She realises in a sudden flood of shame that she’s about to cry.

“I just am,” she sniffs, hot tears threatening to escape that she swiftly scrubs away. “Ugh. I’m _so_ sorry. I just - poor Smee. We never did get justice for him.”

“Now that’s quite enough of that,” Killian sits up, tugging her into his side and running his fingers over the length of her braid. “Smee was a thief, a liar, and a terrible barber. I miss him, right enough, but his life was a dangerous one and he knew well enough he’d finish it by either blade or noose. There’s many as would say he’s had his justice.” His eyes flash dark for a moment, something unreadable in the twist of his mouth before he softens it into the smile she knows he reserves just for her. “You must know, Emma. It was my revenge that led Regina to this ship, not you.”

“If you say so,” she sighs, shuffling down until she can rest her head on his shoulder. “I wonder where she is now.”

“Regina?” Killian asks as he runs his hand over the ridges of Emma’s spine. “Licking her wounds somewhere, I’ve no doubt.”

“Do you think she’ll come back?” Emma turns her face up to his, her brow furrowed. “Now would be the perfect time - ”

“You sound like Blue,” Killian scolds gently. “Have a little faith in yourself, Swan.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“Well.” He rolls slightly so that she’s pressed between his body and the thin cot mattress, his smile soft. “I suppose I’ll just have to have enough faith for the both of us.”

When he kisses her, he tastes like the ocean, the salt on his lips rough against her own as his tongue slips out to seek entrance. She lets him press her into the bed, appreciating the feel of him through the thin layer of her breeches rather than her typical voluminous skirts and letting her legs fall open until he’s settled in the cradle of her thighs, even though her knee ends up jammed rather awkwardly against the wooden wall.

“I’d forgotten how awkward this bed is,” she mutters, her complaint ending on an ill-disguised moan as Killian turns his attentions to the skin beneath her ear.

“Only a bad workman blames his tools, Swan,” Killian says, his eyes flashing dark as he pulls back to tug at her shirt. “And I seem to recall making you scream in this very bed before.”

“I didn’t _scream_ ,” Emma huffs as her shirt falls away under the point of the hook.

“Oh, but you did, love,” Killian says, tutting lightly as he runs the hook under the edge of her corset, his eyes fixed on hers. “I do so enjoy the pleasure of a beautiful woman. It’s a matter of pride, y’see, to an old pirate like me.”

She reaches up, grinning, to pluck at one of the few white hairs at his temple.

“You said it. How old are you anyway, three hundred?”

“Near enough,” he smirks, before turning his attentions to the clasp of her breeches. “Never heard you complain about my… experience before.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

He has to shuffle back awkwardly in the small space in order to free her from her trousers, his head tilted against the slope of the ceiling, and there’s something about the image of him like this - awkward and a little ridiculous as it might be - that fills her with a warmth that makes her heart ache.

“You love me for it,” he says, lifting her stocking clad foot over his shoulder and wriggling his eyebrows outrageously before slipping forward to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to her core.

And she does. She really, really does.

–

Her dreams are more peaceful when she’s in Killian’s arms, the rhythm of his breathing enough to soothe her fevered imaginings, but they still come. The voice is quieter, _Saviour_ only a whisper on the wind, as she flies a thousand feet above the ocean like some ridiculous seabird until mighty ships are merely tiny specks below her. She laughs, looking about for Killian, but she’s alone up here with only the scudding clouds and the constant whisper for company, so she dives down, down, down determined to find him aboard one of the ships below, sea spray blinding her as she chases after the stern of a swiftly moving vessel. She opens her mouth to shout when she sees the Jolly Roger painted boldly across her nameplate, but a wave catches her, filling her lungs with water until she’s spluttering, falling, and Killian sails faster, and further, and -

She wakes with a start to the swaying of the lanterns, rolling unsteadily from the safety of Killian’s arms as the ship pitches beneath them and sends her staggering to her feet. It’s bitterly cold out of the warmth of their bed, and the ship creaks woefully around her as she stumbles to the desk, searching for something thicker than the thin cotton of Killian’s shirt to keep her warm.

There’s a sea chest against the wall beside the ladder, unlocked, and even though a part of her balks at the invasion of privacy, Killian’s soft snores from the other side of the cabin and the goosebumps on her skin conspire to push any such concerns to the back of her mind. Even so, she winces slightly as it creaks open, but Killian doesn’t stir, not even as she begins to rummage through the varied and occasionally bizarre contents. There are bronze coins as big as her palm, and small glass ornaments wrapped in bright paper. There are clothes she doesn’t recognise at all - a blue serge coat with golden epaulets, a yellowed waistcoat with tarnished buttons - and others she knows well. Almost at the very bottom she finds a woman’s dress as red as blood, made of a material softer than any she’s ever seen outside of the palace, and she places it to one side as reverently as she dare, her heart in her mouth at the thought of what Killian may say if he woke now.

Beneath the dress, tucked neatly at the side of the chest like the most unassuming of forgotten belongings, is a black velvet bag.

It throbs, a menacing red glow emanating with every pulse, as Emma reaches with trembling fingers to tug at the laces.          

She pulls too hard, the bag slipping from her sweat slicked hands and sending its contents scattering over the base of the chest. A heart, darkened but still throbbing, landing wet and heavy on the boards and with it, a knife. A terrible, familiar, curved blade, skitters to rest in front of her and by the dark red gleam of the Evil Queen’s heart, she reads the name ‘Rumplestiltskin.’  


	4. Sparks

She’s held the heart before, squeezed it tightly between her fingers, her face screwed up in rage as she watched the Evil Queen pant and writhe before her. It had made her feel powerful back then. Almost indescribably so. Justice had been just one clenched fist away, victory in the war she’d never realised she’d been born to fight a half second from being realised.

Now when she picks it up, holds it carefully in her trembling hands, the tiny vibrations of each beat send tremors to a her very core, her face white and terrified in the reflection of its dark centre.

Rumplestiltskin’s blade glints up at her from the chest as a single tear drops to mar its shining surface.

He’d kept it, and she doesn’t know what that means.

He’d kept it from her, and she’s oh so afraid she does.

From across the room she hears Killian stir, his voice gravelly with sleep as he rouses enough to realise she’s not there.

“Emma?” he grumbles, and she makes some sort of sound of acknowledgement that she intends to be non-committal but comes out more of a sob. He sits up, and she imagines the way his brows will furrow to see her sitting so far away even though she can’t draw her eyes away from what feels so much like a betrayal.  “It’s cold love, come back to bed.” She shakes her head, another squeaking little sob escaping, and she hears the moment his bare feet hit the floor, feels him approach her shaking form. “Emma?”

“What is this?” she says, her voice a brittle little thing that cracks with every syllable.

He pauses, close enough that she can feel his intake of breath as he sees what she’s holding, but his voice is light and almost unrecognisable as he answers.

“It’s a sea chest,” he says. “It’s full of things. Isn’t it a little late at night to be requiring an inventory of my belongings?”

“Don’t be facetious,” she snaps. “You know what I mean.”

“Forgive me. I thought your observational skills were a little more advanced.”

“You kept it?”

“Of course I bloody well did! Why wouldn’t I? Emma, I didn’t mean for you to find - ”

“The Evil Queen’s heart? _This_? You decided to just, what, hide them for a rainy day?”

“Well, I thought it would be bad form to let it get lost, Swan. What would you have had me do? I couldn’t -”

“Why didn’t you tell me - trust me? Is that what you ‘couldn’t’ do?”

“I thought - nevermind what I thought. I was certainly in no position to be returning it before she was banished. I did what I thought was best under the circumstances.”

“And this?”

She gestures to the dagger, something she cannot explain preventing her from picking it up - a sort of darkness that clings to it and makes her breath come sharper whenever she looks at it. Killian’s expression turns darker too, his eyes flashing. The ship begins to rock beneath them.

“Insurance.”

“Against what.”

“Against _him_ ,” he shouts. “By the gods, Emma, do you really not realise what he’s taken from me - what he’d take again in a heartbeat? I can’t - I can’t risk that. I can’t risk you.”

Emma laughs, short and humourless.

“So you’ll carry on with your vengeance? You want to be with me so very, very much you’ll darken your very soul? Excuse me if I don’t swoon at your feet!”

“I don’t _mean_ that I - ”

There’s a terrible crash from above, followed by some ungodly wail that sounds as though it comes from something more beast than man, and the ship rolls wildly to port. They stop immediately, both of their attentions drawn to the window as lightning cuts the sky asunder, the crash of thunder followed by the unmistakable sound of tearing fabric and the terrified footsteps of stampeding men.

“Stay. Here,” Killian grits out, already reaching for his leathers.

Emma scowls, attempting to snatch them away before he can pull them on. “You’ve no right to tell me what to do!”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Killian spits, turning away so that he can finish dressing swiftly out of the heat of her glare. “I’m the captain of this ship and you _will_ obey me or face the consequences.”

“Oh, and what are those _exactly_?” she snarls in return as he heads for the hatchway. “Going to make me walk the plank? You are a pirate, after all.”

Killian pauses, and for a moment she swears she sees his shoulders slump, his whole body seeming to curl in on itself before he stands straighter than ever, not turning back as he says, “If that’s what you think, your Highness, then there’s nothing left for me to say.”

He’s gone before Emma can formulate a reply, the hatch slamming shut behind him.

She stands, slack jawed at his audacity in the cold, damp air he’s left in his wake. From above she hears him shouting orders, his voice clipped steel even through the deck that separates them, and she doesn’t know if itsrage or misery that’s building within her. Her magic is stoking the fire until she’s desperate to _do_ something. _Anything_.

The ship pitches hard, sending her flying onto her already bruised knees as the voices above grow harsher, louder, Killian’s no longer chief amongst them. She grabs her duffel bag and stuffs it with a shirt or two, a couple of pairs of breeches, and, almost without thinking about it, rests the heart of the evil queen on top, tucked neatly between a couple of oranges.

This is familiar, at least. Running. Even if she’s no idea where she’s trying to go. She never has done, except to towards him. And where has that gotten her?

_Happy_ , whispers her heart, furious, as she swings the bag over her shoulder. _It got you to a place where you were_ happy.

Her brain just scoffs. Perhaps happiness was never in the cards for the Saviour after all.

She takes one look back at the bed, at the still rumpled sheets from where their legs had tangled together, and, swallowing hard, heads for the hatch.

–

The storm cracks overhead, the ocean a wild, roiling maelstrom of a thing that sends men and equipment thundering from one side of the ship to the other as she dips and rolls, helpless against the will of the gods. Emma struggles to even see straight against the lashing rain, the world a strange white-dark mix of screaming men and shearing wind. A flash of lightning half blinds her, sending her scuttling back for the bowels of the ship, before a large, cold hand grabs her by the collar of her shirt and drags her fully onto the deck. She clings to the arm that curls around her belly like a lifeline, every possible sin forgiven as the world comes apart beneath them.

“Now that’s more like it,” hisses a voice in her ear. “Wondered if you’d stay below like a rat, _Princess._ ”

Emma growls, a swift elbow to her would-be captor’s solar plexus giving her enough space to free herself, spinning to face him and wishing fiercely that she’d thought to bring her sword.

“Now now,” tuts the large man who’d watched her earlier, one meaty fist clenched over his abdomen, his soaked hair dripping into his eyes. “Is that any way for a lass to treat her captain?”

“You’re not my captain,” she spits, setting her feet further apart as the ship continues to roll.

“Is that so?” He sways with the ship, his expression uncannily calm considering the disaster around him. “Seems we’ve had a vote in your absence, lass.”

He stands aside, gesturing for her to look past him with a mocking little bow.

The mainmast is tilting alarmingly, ropes whipping freely in the wind, and at its base, sodden and bloodied, tied with tarred oakum and with a sword held to his throat:

“Killian?”

There’s no way he can hear her over the raging storm, but his eyes meet hers all the same, ice blue and more furious than she’s ever seen them.

“Let him go!” she demands, whirling on the man on unsteady feet. “Let him go right now!”

He grins, his hand on his cutlass, and shakes his head.

“Now that’s not how it works on my ship. You’ll be following _my_ orders.”

“I will _not_!” Emma spits, just as a grey-faced sailor slides helplessly across the deck between them. The man doesn’t even flinch at the cries that follow his final drop into the waves. Emma swallows hard as the ship lists further and further to port. “You need him,” she says, her eyes flicking to Killian to see him still watching her. “Aren’t you afraid?”

He laughs, a wild, terrifying thing that screams of madness.

“About the storm? Nowt but a squall. I’ve got more important things on my mind.”

It happens in slow motion, except, of course, it doesn’t. He advances on her, his teeth bared, as she struggles to keep her footing on the now awash deck. Her magic spits and fizzes, helpless, as her attention is dragged from his feral grin, to Killian, to the sword at his throat.

She can see the strain in Killian’s shoulders as he tries to free himself, the whites of his eyes as he turns them on her - wide and bright and terrified - and she tries to say she’s sorry. Tries to tell him she loves him, really and truly, for good and for ill, but the words won’t come and even if they would the storm would take them.

Perhaps it’s for the best, then. Milah told him she loved him, and then died on this deck. She died, and now _she’ll_ die, and there’s nothing for it, no point to anything but to close her eyes as the man reaches for her with one meaty fist. The last sound she hears a chorus of strangled gasps and, above it all, Killian calling her name.

She never sees the wave that takes her.

–

For years his nights were haunted by dreams of that last storm under Silver, the one where the ship fell away beneath him in an unnatural marriage of fire and flood that had echoed through every brine-corrupted breath he’d struggled to draw.

Eventually those dreams had faded, replaced by the horrors of Neverland and the dark, flashing eyes of a demon, by the memory of Milah’s last breath, by Liam. He’d almost come to forget that night - a good sailor never fears the depths after all - and eventually all his dreams had become softer. Sweeter. Emma’s presence alone enough to send his fears skittering away to the dark corners of his mind.

It makes their return a thousand times more painful.

He think’s he’s the one screaming, and maybe he is, rage and terror combining in an unholy roar as he uses his whole body weight to tear at the ropes that bind him from reaching Emma as her pale, terrified face disappears behind a wall of water. The Jolly Roger echoes his pain as the sea crashes over her deck and drags all in its path to the depths. Munitious men are reduced to flotsam, their death cries that wet, warbling infantile sob of a child for its mother.

He briefly spots the one who’d slit Wilkin’s throat, sees the slow, dark, spread of the stain across the rear of the man’s breeches as the ship howls in agony, her spine cracking over another great wave.

And then. Nothing.

–

His throat feels as though it’s full of needles that dig deeper into his flesh as he retches and heaves against a belly full of salt water, his back and arms protesting sorely from where they’re still tied to the splintered remains of the mast. It was ballast, he thinks, spitting bile. He’s been saved by those that would have killed him.

Perhaps he’ll appreciate the irony better when he can breathe.

He blinks against the bright light of dawn, his eyes stinging, and by the gods, how long has he been out?

Emma will be worried. Emma will be furious. Emma -

This time, it’s not the seawater that sends him retching, panic making his heart pound uncomfortably as he struggles to get to his feet.

“Easy there, mate.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

There’s a man at his shoulder, short, swarthy and poorly dressed, his face a mixture of shock and the wry expression of a man who’s seen most everything before. He runs rheumy eyes over the mast and the firm knotwork keeping Killian in place, and tuts lightly as Killian strains away from him.

“What in seven hells happened to you?”

Killian stares at him, wild eyed.

“Bachelor party gone wrong, mate, what the hell do you think?”

“No need to be salty,” says the man brightly, and he slaps Killian’s shoulder so hard he almost stumbles back into the surf. “I’d say you’ve had a lucky escape.”

“Lucky?” Killian spits, rounding on the much shorter man and baring his teeth. “I’ll give you _lucky_. Untie me from this thing this moment or I’ll make you wish your mother had been a nun!”

The man sneezes, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and shrugs.

“Ain’t got a mother, and what’s in it for me?”

Killian leans over as far as he can without overbalancing, his face only inches from the man’s as he hisses. “Now. Or the only thing in it for you is a head start.”

“All right, all right,” grumbles the man, pulling a blunt flick knife from one of his threadbare pockets and hacking away at the knots. “No need to be rude.”

“Have you seen my ship?”

“Only this bit,” the man says, knocking his fist against the stub of mast as it finally falls away from Killian’s back. “Lucky escape, I’d say.”

“Lucky,” Killian breathes, shaking the cramp from his wrists as he stares out across the waves, the dark smear of the retreating storm still malevolent and black at the horizon. His ship, his livelihood, _Emma_ , all ghosts in its wake. “I think I need a drink.”

–

He needs ten, perhaps twenty, the numbers fading together in a burn of cheap rum and bitter regret as he watches the ruffled skirts and wide red mouths of the whores who pass him by. His thick-tongued refusal of their affections, the snatching away of the hand they’d forcibly pressed against their damp, hot skin have led to their giving him a wide berth, leaving him to stew slowly in a pit filled with misery and rum.

Of course he ended up in a brothel.

Men like him, alas, always do.

It’s a down at heel sort of place. The women wear smudged kohl and strained smiles as they simper and preen their way around the bare wooden tables, and the clientele are boisterous and loud, their bellies fat with drink and their eyes bright with the promises of the flesh to come. Except, that is, for the older man at the end of the bar.

He’s staring into a long empty tankard, his eyes hollow, and Killian wonders if he sees his own reflection in the leather bound pirate the way Killian sees himself: lost, bone tired, willing to throw their last coin into the drain just to forget.

He’s not sure when he last felt pity, not sure what to do with it. Emma gave him this, he knows, it was she who made him into a man who could see beyond the limits of his own darkness.

It’s Emma’s legacy, Emma’s faith in him that hangs like a millstone round his neck as he struggles to force away the truth. Another drink, maybe. Another two. Anything to stop him thinking.

Her eyes had been open, he remembers. They’d been wide and frightened and fixed on him, and he’d been helpless to save her. Useless. Worthless.

Three. Three drinks.

He taps a coin on the table to attract the attentions of the barman - a sallow faced youth with gap teeth and a sly smile - and nods towards the other man.

“What’s he drinking?”

“Nothing much,” scoffs the lad. “Never does. Seems he forgets this is a place of business.” He looks down at the gold coin between Killian’s fingers, and grins. “Not like you I’ll wager. Girls not caught your eye?”

“I’m not here for a girl.”

The boy’s eyes light up, and he leans over the counter until his face is mere inches from Killian’s.

“Well, we can arrange an alternative that suits,” he says breathily, his tongue darting out to dampen his lips. “For a price.”

Killian merely stares, the coin held slightly tighter in his fingers. For half a moment he considers it - would consider anything if it would quiet the roaring in his mind even for a moment - but then he thinks of Emma, flushed and angry and beautiful and dead, and he knows he won’t. Instead he plasters a false smirk over his face and presses infinitesimally closer just the watch the colour rise in the lad’s cheeks.

“I want to buy that man a drink. And three more here, lad, while you’re at it or I’ll show you what kind of business _I’m_ in.”

“Oh promises, promises,” sighs the lad with a scowl, but he turns to fetch the rum bottle regardless. “He’s no fun though, you’re wasting your time there.”

“I’ve plenty to waste,” Killian grumbles, throwing back the first glass almost as soon as it’s placed before him. “A lifetime of it, in fact.”

The boy shrugs, moving down the bar to drop a tankard in front of the other man. “From an admirer,” he says with a sneer, but the other man barely moves, only the flicking of tired blue eyes from tankard to Killian to show he’d even heard. The barman rolls his eyes and stamps back down the bar to pour Killian’s second drink. “That’s gratitude for you.”

Killian flicks the coin across the bar top, and concentrates on the rum.

There’s the sound of breaking glass and a bellow of laughter from somewhere behind him, a group of men who are well into their cups and enjoying every moment by the sounds of it, and it sets his teeth on edge, his knuckles creasing white around his third glass.

There’s a squeal, high-pitched and indignant, and then the slap of flesh on flesh followed by another roar of laughter. He turns despite himself, some long buried memory of a long gone tavern rising within him as he hears the clatter of crockery against the floor, only to see one of the quieter girls - fresh-faced with golden hair - flung over the knee of a man with long greasy hair, her skirt rucked up around her waist as he slaps the back of her thighs with the flat of his hand, his companions cheering.

“Now don’t squeal, pretty,” the man says, his grin exposing the blackened stumps of what once were teeth. “Clumsy girls must be punished!”

Maybe he thinks of Emma. Emma as he’d first known her, serious-faced and weighted down with trays of drinks, her corset laced high and the dagger strapped to her thigh. Maybe he thinks of Milah. Tired and sad and desperate for an ounce of kindness. Maybe he thinks of the kitchen girls, young and silly and giggling their way through his secret, patient lessons. Their delight as they learned to write their own names, to trace the letters in the books he takes them.

Maybe he doesn’t think at all, but his hook’s at the man’s throat nonetheless.

“I’d let her go, mate, if I were you. Make the smart choice.”

The man pauses, his body stiffening at the feel of sharp steel against delicate skin, and the girl slithers off his lap, tugging her skirts down and bolting for the upstairs without a backwards look. The tavern grows silent, the only sounds the harsh breathing of the man at his mercy and the metallic sweep of sword from scabbard.

“Smart choice might be getting the fuck away from me, _mate_ ,” growls the man as his companions draw their weapons. “Seems you’re outnumbered.”

Killian smiles.

“Oh good.”

He shoves the man off his chair, sending him sprawling across the floor. He hoists the chair up to his chest, fending off a charge of roaring, spitting men with little more than four wooden legs and fleet footwork. He spins, panting, to block a slashing sword with the curve of his hook, his right leg coming up to kick another man square in his most precious jewels, a bite of sharp laughter escaping as his hook twists and meets a soft, undefended gut.

“Come on!” he bellows, madness in the grit of his teeth, the glint of his eyes as he stamps down on a wounded knee. “Come and take me! Come on!” He flings the chair to one side, the wood splintering against the bar and sending the boy scurrying to safety, his chest heaving as he stares down two more men whose swords have dropped to their sides, their eyes wary.

It seems even stupidity recognises insanity when it sees it.

The dive for him together, and no sooner has he kicked one sword away, the toe of his boot following through to make contact with his attacker’s solar plexus, than the other is behind him, his breath hot at his ear as he presses his advantage home and Killian is caught, unable to use his hook with the other man’s steel pressed tight against his neck.

“I don’t know who the fuck you you think you are,” the man says, and Killian laughs.

“Well, that makes two of us, at least.” He stands a little straighter, lets the sword’s edge cut into the salt-silted fabric of his collar. “You ever killed a man?”

He hears the smile that follows, the words curling out through lips stretched wide. “‘Bout to.”

The sword draws back, and he could turn, should turn, should thrust his hook through the man’s soft palate for even the mere suggestion that he might defeat _Captain Hook_ , but his head is full of Emma, his body slow to react, his heart crying out for her, and he doesn’t.

He closes his eyes, and hopes she’ll be there when he opens them.

There’s a draft, a close wind as death sweeps down, a heavy _thunk_ like a sack of potatoes thrown down a kitchen chute, and then, nothing.

“You can open your eyes now, stranger.”

He does so, only to see the sad-faced man from the bar standing before him, the seat of the long destroyed chair in his hands and the last of Killian’s opponents lying face-down and unmoving at his feet.

Killian toes at his arm, just to make sure, and then claims the man’s dropped sword for his own, before raising a brow at his unlikely rescuer.

“I should have bought you two drinks, might have finished it sooner.”

The man smiles, a small, creased little thing that doesn’t reach his eyes, but it pulls at Killian in a way he can’t quite place.

“You’re welcome, stranger. It’s been many years since I’ve seen anyone do anything quite as stupid as that,” he says, and offers a large hand to help him up. “I’m almost impressed.”

“I live to please,” says Killian offering a tiny bow. “And you are?”

The man pauses, a brief shadow passing over his face as though that’s a question he’s long since forgotten the answer to, then holds out his hand again. “David.”

Killian takes it, somewhat taken aback by the strength of the man’s grip as they shake.

“Killian Jones,” he says. “Next one’s on you.”


	5. Unforgiven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, all love and gratitude to my wonderful betas phiralovesloki and katie-dub, and insanely talented artist seastarved! Thanks to everyone who's commented so far! You make my day <3

She wonders if all deaths feel like drowning; the way the darkness swallows you whole, crushing you beneath it until your vision bursts white and your lungs catch fire, your limbs like stones dragging you deeper even as you strain for the light. She sees creatures through her salt-burned eyes, things with wide mouths and long fingers that reach out for her, lights that make no sense, bright and burning as her lungs as she strives for the up turned down. Larger, and brighter, until they swallow her whole, her screaming body suddenly at peace.

She wonders if the afterlife is supposed to be this irritating.

“Hey,” trills a bell-like voice laced with worry. “ _Hey_. Come on, I know you’re awake! Drink some of this, come on now. Open wide.”

She feels something cool pressed against her lips, and tries to toss her head to the side to avoid it, but then there are hands either side of her head, lifting her slightly and just firm enough for her to be unable to resist, and another at her chin forcing her mouth just open enough for a dribble of liquid to pass onto her parched tongue.

“That’s the way,” says a second voice. This one a little deeper, older perhaps. A man, well-spoken and seemingly concerned. “You’ve had a terrible shock.”

Emma attempts to open her eyes, grimacing at the pounding headache the action brings on. “You can say that again.”

“Maybe she’s lost her hearing?” the woman says, concerned, before putting her lips close to Emma’s ear and half-bellowing: “He said, you’ve had quite a shock!”

“I’m not deaf,” Emma grumbles, ignoring the pain long enough to prop herself up on her elbows, squinting through salt-laced eyes as she tries to make out her rescuers. “I’m just...” she winces again as the hands holding her head slip away. “Where’s my ship?”

As her vision clears she sees the woman kneeling in front of her - older but beautiful, with long flowing red hair cut through with grey, and a kind expression - bite at her lip, her eyes shining.

“You’re the only survivor we’ve found,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

“What? No.” Emma shakes her head, forcing the bile that the action brings back down her throat. “I fell - I went over. We didn’t sink - we didn’t - ”

Her heart begins to pound, her lungs protesting as her breathing picks up speed. Killian. Where’s Killian?

“ _Where’s Killian_?”

“Who’s Killian?” asks the woman gently, her thumb on her cheek. It comes away bloody, and Emma wonders wildly whose it could be, any physical pain subsumed by the sheer all-encompassing terror that makes her heart hammer and her voice crack.

“My - d” _Everything_ , she thinks. _He’s everything_. “Captain. He’s my captain.”

“I’m so sorry,” says the woman, her eyes filling with tears, and Emma almost sneers at her because she’s _wrong,_ there’s nothing to be sorry for. Killian’s fine. Killian’s coming. Killian’s -

Her vision finally clears, and beyond the sweet and tearful face of the woman, she sees the long stretch of beach and the terrible, splintered remains of what was once a beautiful ship. The Jolly Roger has been snapped clean in two and dragged to her grave by the tides, and amongst her ragged and sea-soaked bones lie the grey, lumpen masses of what once were men.

“I am truly so sorry,” says the woman again. “The storm was cruel. Poseidon must have been furious.”

“Or maybe it was just a storm,” the man says as he rejoins them, a grey blanket in his arms that he holds out to Emma. She lets it drop to the shingle, her eyes still fixed on the nearest lump.

(He’s missing a boot, his face buried in the dust and pebbles, and he’s not Killian. None of them are. They can’t be. They _can’t be_.)

“Not every storm is raised along with his blood pressure, Ariel.”

“Typical human,” mutters the woman - Ariel. “Always sure you know better than the ocean, and where does it get you?”

“Lost,” Emma says, eyes still wide and fixed. “All lost.”

“Come now,” the man says, placing his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get you warm and dry.”

Ariel takes her by the elbow, and it takes a couple of moments before Emma’s even cognizant of the way they’re leading her up the pebble bank and away from the Jolly Roger and her spilled cargo of corpses. She tries to shake herself free, but their grips are strong and her muscles are protesting sorely after the battering of the waves.

“Where are you taking me?” she bites out. “I don’t want to - I can’t leave without him.”

Ariel hums gently, and her grip on her elbow relaxes fractionally. “Don’t worry, we’re going somewhere safe.”

“Don’t believe you,” Emma grunts petulantly, almost succeeding in her escape before the man catches hold of her yet more tightly, his face drawn tight in concern.

“You’d rather be left for the wreckers?” The man shakes his head. “You’re a strange one.”

“Yeah,” she says, her feet dragging through the shingle, her heart torn amongst the Jolly Roger’s splintered remains. “That’s what they all say.”

\--

The man’s name is Eric, and somewhere safe is his castle. _Our castle_ , says Ariel, smiling as she swings from Eric’s arm and directs a dozen scurrying servants to see to Emma’s bodily comforts. _Ours_ , Eric agrees, with soft lips and hearts in his eyes, and Emma tries very hard not to be sick on the white marble floors.

She supposes she could blame it on the drowning. It would only be half a lie, after all.

Ariel chivvies her up the wide golden staircase to where the servants have drawn a hot bath, her hands constantly fluttering around Emma’s elbows as though she expects her to collapse at any moment, a gaudy sort of charm bracelet jingling constantly and setting Emma’s teeth on edge.

“Make yourself at home,” she says, thrusting soft towels and large brightly coloured bottles into Emma’s stiff arms. “You’ve had such a terrible shock.”

Emma nods - doesn’t know what else to do, can’t think of other words to say - but part of her, bitter, dark, and clawing its way up her throat wants to spit that of course it’s not a shock. None of it is. It’s fate, or destiny, or some other crappy shit that Blue used to speak of with such sure certainty. It’s just what happens to Emma Swan.

“Yeah,” she manages as the other woman drapes a robe over the side of the roll top bath and turns to her, her hands twisting together beneath that godforsaken bracelet. “It sucks.”

“The thing is,” Ariel spills out, before biting her lip as if trying to hold the words back. “The thing is - I know who you are.”

 _That makes one of us_ , Emma thinks, but manages to keep her face neutral as the Ariel shuffles on the spot.  “Do you?” she says instead.

“Yes!” Ariel nods eagerly, leaning forward and then swaying back as though she thought of going in for  hug and swiftly changed her mind. “You’re Emma - Princess of Misthaven! The Saviour.” Her voice drops as Emma cringes. “They say you defeated the Evil Queen.”

“Fat lot of good it’s done me,” Emma mutters, and drops her pile of bathing accoutrements to the ground. “Is that why the welcome?”

“You’re lucky,” Ariel says. “If Eric had realised what flag you sailed under - ”

“Mine,” Emma bites out, assaulted by the sudden vision of her standard on the Jolly Roger’s mast, and Killian’s shining eyes. “We sailed under mine.”

“And he fell for it, of course,” Ariel says, rolling her eyes. “Men are funny creatures. But I know, and you know, that that ship was no vessel of Misthaven’s navy. Misthaven doesn’t even have a navy.”

“Misthaven’s castle doesn’t have a roof,” Emma snips back. “We can’t all have the golden taps and crazy high thread count.”

“You know that’s not what I mean, you know who you really sail with,” Ariel insists, leaning in again with unnaturally wide eyes.

“Do I?”

“Yes!”

Emma lifts her chin. “Enlighten me.”

Ariel grins, her face lighting up with giddy glee.

“ _Pirates_.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma snaps, turning to face the steaming water of the bath. Her heart hammering uncomfortably as the reality of being accused of piracy in a seafaring kingdom dawns on her, her breath catching short in her throat.

“Oh don’t be like that,” Ariel pleads. “I won’t tell him, I swear it.”

“You won’t have to. There’s nothing to tell.”

“I’m not like them, you know,” Ariel says, and Emma risks a glance over her shoulder to see the other woman pouting mulishly. “I wasn’t always one of them - most of them still don’t believe I can be.”

“Well,” Emma says. “I know how that feels, at least.”

“I’ll leave you to bathe,” says Ariel. “But - perhaps later? I’d so very love to hear about it.”

She smiles, and looks so keen that Emma can barely help the little nod she offers in return.

“Maybe later,” she agrees, and Ariel’s smile blooms into something beautiful and thrilling and somehow otherworldly.

“I look forward to it.”

Ariel leaves, the servants scurrying after her with downturned faces, and Emma is left alone, bedraggled and shivering slightly in the large marble-lined room.

She breathes - in, out - concentrates on curling her toes to make sure they’re still there, her fingernails biting into her palms just enough for her to be certain it hurts.

“All right,” she tells herself. “All right, we can do this - we can - ”

She takes another deep, shuddering breath, and starts to pick at the stiff laces of her breeches with numb fingers.

( _Killian had laughed, delighted, the first time she’d pulled them on, his eyebrows dancing as she’d spun and posed at the end of their bed, his tongue slipping out to play at the corner of his mouth._

_“I always knew there was a little pirate in you, Swan.”_

_“Little?” she’d said, grinning wickedly as she’d crawled up his body. “You sure?”_

_“Minx.”_ )

“Enough,” she snaps, loud enough for the word to echo back to her over and over. _Enough, enough_. Then softer, the word cracking in her throat. “Enough.”

She pulls roughly at the laces, then tugs her shirt over her head without thinking about it any more than she absolutely needs to, clambering over the high side of the bath and letting the still slightly too hot water envelop her until even her face is underwater, her hair rising around her in a golden cloud as she lets out a silent, waterlogged, scream.

When she rises her cheeks are flushed pink, long tendrils of hair lying slicked to her forehead as she pants for breath, but her eyes are dry.

They have to be.

Pirates don’t cry, after all.

\--

Ariel’s eyes glitter in the firelight as she sits across from Emma, the high backed chair she’d chosen having been dragged further and further across the ornate rug until the two women are almost nose to nose.

“So tell me,” she breathes. “What was it like?”

“Piracy?” Emma pauses in the act of rubbing a towel through the ends of her hair and wrinkles her nose. “I don’t suppose I had time to find out. From what I saw when Kil - before, it involved a lot of drink and very little personal hygiene.”

“Well, that’s just men,” snorts Ariel. “All the same. But it must have been so romantic!”

"Not quite as romantic as your story I'll bet."

“That’s very sweet of you,” giggles Ariel, “but I haven’t been a princess for _years_ , and one of the joys of getting older is that most of your subjects start to see you as simply eccentric rather than dangerous. Not,” she adds, “that I was ever anybody’s idea of _sensible_.”

“Still, pirates. Aren’t they,” Emma pauses, chewing at her lip, “frowned upon?”

“Hung, drawn and quartered as a rule, yes. But still,” Ariel sighs. “I remember swimming in the wake of their galleons and just _wishing_ that even for a moment I could feel that free.”

“Sorry, swimming?”

Ariel rests her hand against her bracelet and smiles down at the way the charms twinkle in the firelight. “I’m a creature of the ocean at heart, and so are they, so are _you_.”

“Not me.” Emma shakes her head. “I’m not made for all that pitching and weaving and wobbling about. But Kil - ” she stops, her head full of visions of him, wide-eyed and wind-blown and oh-so-happy at the helm of his ship, swallows hard against the ache, and goes back to drying her hair. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh Emma,” Ariel reaches out and stills her hand with her own. “Your captain?”

Emma shrugs, the towel dropping to the floor, and is horrified to feel the tell tale dampness of a tear tracking its way down her cheek.

“You must have loved him very much.”

“Do you know,” Emma says, scrubbing at her face with the back of her fist, “I was never really sure? It seemed - it seemed too good to be true.”

“And now?”

Emma smiles, the stiff, uncomfortable thing thing that she’d practiced in the mirror to keep Blue happy, and Ariel takes the hint, sitting back in her seat, her hands folded in her lap.

“And it was. But now it doesn’t matter, does it?” Emma stands and curtseys. “I should get some rest.”

“Of course,” agrees Ariel, standing too, “but Emma, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from life, it’s that love _always_ matters.”

“Maybe in your life,” counters Emma. “But never in mine.”

“Not yet, perhaps.”

Emma turns to face the door closing her eyes against a second traitorous tear.

“Not ever.”

\--

She makes it down for breakfast after a sleepless night, her brief dreams all full of grasping wet hands and the screams of the dying, to find Eric and Ariel both sat at the table waiting for her, a large yellowed map spread between them.

“Princess Emma,” says Eric, rising from the table and bowing his head. “I trust you slept well?”

She smiles weakly, returning his bow with a nod as she draws out a chair.

“I can't thank you enough for your hospitality,” she manages in way of answer, and he smiles, satisfied, before sliding back into his chair.

“You are very welcome here,” he says sincerely. “Although since I am certain you must be longing for the comforts of your own kingdom I've been so bold as to procure a ship -”

“Wait, what?” Emma freezes, a sweet roll halfway to her mouth. “You're sending me home?”

“Why I - ” Eric looks at Ariel, flustered. “I assumed you'd want to go.”

“No!” she snaps, then bites her tongue, forces a calmness she doesn't feel, and continues. “I came to find someone - two someones - if I go back without them - ”

_Killian will have died for nothing. Killian will have died for nothing and I'll be alone._

“If I go back without them, my kingdom won't be safe.”

“Why didn't you say so?” Eric asks, rolling the map up and leaning forward on his elbows, his face lighting up almost gleefully. “These people, who are they? My kingdom has some of the finest soldiers in the realm, they can track man or beast.”

A frisson of something like excitement travels through her chest and into her fingers as she presses her palms flat against the map.

“Tell me,” she says, “have you ever heard of a woman called Snow White?”


	6. The Man on the Run

Killian and his new ally - for lack of a better word -  liberate more than their fair share of the tavern’s remaining rum, the young barman handing each bottle over with an enthusiasm borne of sheer terror and hands that are shaking too hard to catch hold of the half a pouch of gold that Killian spills into them, and slip out into the night, the tavern gradually becoming loud and boisterous again as they leave it in their wake.

“Do you always have that sort of effect on places?” asks David, popping the cork from one of the bottles and taking a generous swig. “Or is tonight just my lucky night?”

“And why would you think I wasn’t the peaceable sort, hmm?”

“Something to do with the weaponised hand and the pirate’s luck, maybe?” David says, raising an eyebrow as he offers Killian the bottle. “Or do you take me for a fool as well?”

“I find it best not to query the motives of unexpected allies,” says Killian, lifting the bottle in toast. “Especially not those with such exceptional taste in liquor.”

“Allies,” David murmurs, his brow furrowing. “That’s an interesting choice of words.”

“You saved me from becoming a tale that lad could drink on for decades, so aye, I’d say that makes us allies.”

David huffs, and kicks open the door to a small, run-down stone cottage that Killian had barely noticed they were nearing. “Doesn’t explain why you’re still here. Are we friends now?”

“Well, I tend to have that effect on people,” Killian counters. “You haven’t asked me to leave.”

David deposits his armload of rum bottles down on a rickety wooden tabletop, and raises an eyebrow.

“No, I suppose I haven’t.”

“Well then,” Killian pulls out a chair and drapes himself over it so that he can lean over the back and wave a rum bottle at David. “Shall we?”

David’s only answer is the popping of another cork.

\--

He’s a strange one, this pirate.

It’s been years - too many years to bear thinking of really - since David has shown any interest in anything beyond his small flock of sheep up in the hills or the bottom of a liquor glass, but there was something about the look in the pirate’s eyes that had drawn him in. Woken him up.

Back in the bar it had looked like madness - a blind rage beyond reason or understanding - but now in the low light of his peat fire, it’s rawer, realer.

Familiar.

“What happened to you?”

The pirate takes a swig from his bottle, his eyebrow lifting.

“What makes you think anything’s happened to me?”

“Well, the way you can’t answer a straight question for a start,” snorts David, and gestures at his tattered leather attire. “Plus you look like you’ve been seven rounds with a bull and lost.”

“Touche,” says Killian, lifting his bottle again. “But uncalled for.”

“Plus, I watched you with those men. You were outnumbered, hopeless, and yet - you seemed to enjoy it.”

“Well, I love a challenge.”

“You’ve weren’t expecting anyone to save you, were you?”

The pirate shakes his head, his gaze fixed at the bottom of his bottle.

“Very observant of you.”

“Let’s just say I’ve seen it before,” he smiles wryly into his rum. “Was it a woman?”

Killian doesn’t answer back this time, all the pretence and smirk dropping away from his expression until for David, it’s not unlike looking at his own reflection. A man torn open until there’s nothing left but guilt and self-loathing.

He takes pity, taking a deep breath before launching into a story he hasn’t told for more than a decade, the words forming heavy and strange on his tongue before falling unstoppably into the silence between them.

“My wife - my daughter - when I lost them it was like I lost myself. I became someone I barely recognised, someone I didn’t want to be,” he says. “Sometimes I feel like, more than anything, that’s how I truly let them down. By losing myself, I lost them all over again, every day.”

“Letting her down?” Killian half scoffs, refusing to meet David’s eyes. “I barely even had to try. I always was the worst human around.”

“Really?”

Killian laughs joylessly. “Really.”

“Did she think that? This woman?”

That hits a nerve alright, the pirate slamming his bottle of rum down on the table and running his hand through his already wild hair.

“What is this, relationship counselling?” he grumbles. “Can’t a man enjoy a fight and a drink without him being cut up over a woman?”

“Like I said,” David says, and gestures to himself. “I’ve seen it before.”

Killian presses his hand to his face, his words muffled as though he’s having to force them past his own lips.

“I don’t know. I think - I thought - that perhaps she’d seen something in me, something better than I’d ever been able to see in myself. But then, I proved her wrong. I failed her, and now I can never make it up to her.”

David takes a long swig of rum, his own old pains rearing up in sympathy. “My wife - I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t save her. She trusted me and I let her down.”

“Well, aren’t we a pair?” sighs Killian, rubbing his hand over his beard before reaching for another bottle, his eyes slightly red

“And doesn’t that call for another drink?”

\--

Killian drinks like he hasn’t in years. Not that he hadn’t had more than his share of rum on dark Neverland nights, or swilled a month’s worth of weak mead down his throat in a thousand taverns to celebrate a victory or toast a lost crewmate.

Drinking like this though, with burning eyes and an aching heart, this is the drinking of the abandoned boy, the child sold into slavery, the orphaned, brotherless, loverless sod who had nothing better to do, nothing else to try but to numb his brain and his heart and his soul with enough rum to send him back to Misthaven in a barrel.

He wonders, in that vague way that drunkenness brings, if Blue would bury him or hang his remains on the gibbert, a feast of pickled pirate for the birds Emma had shooed from their bedroom. It’s the fate he deserved before her, of that he’s sure, but he’d begun to think - to hope - to believe even that there might be something better in him. Something that Emma had seen and dragged to the surface kicking and screaming.

He isn’t sure yet if it’ll drown along with her. Isn’t sure if it matters.

Isn’t at all sure about that last bottle either, if he’s honest.

“If you’re going to be sick, at least aim for the fire.”

Killian squints up at David with one half-opened eye. The other man has collapsed on one of his chairs, an almost full rum bottle swinging between his fingers as he attempts to glare at Killian.

“I’m serious, you know.”

“I won’t be sick,” Killian slurs, his belly roiling slightly as he attempts to sit up straighter. “I’m a - a _captain_.”

“And I’m a king,” David says, snorting, “but it’s no good is it, not if we can’t - can’t even  stand up.”

“S’overrated,” grumbles Killian, slouching back down and kicking at one of the empty bottles that litter the floor around their feet. “Being king.”

“How’d you know?” scoffs David. “Boats aren’t - boats aren’t _the same_.”

“No, no, no,” Killian mutters, shaking his head very slowly as the room begins to spin. “Not - not the boat. There’s a castle, and a princess, and she -” he wrinkles his nose, something playing at the back of his mind, some fact he should remember but the rum has left everything a bit hazy, a bit wrong. “She loved me. I think. Did she love me, Dave?”

David’s only answer is a long, rattling snore, his bottle of rum slipping from his fingers to spill into the clay beneath his feet.

“I did love her,” Killian tells him, his voice low as though it’s a confession, a _secret_ , even though he isn’t sure he remembers why that should be. “I loved her more than anything. Did it matter, Dave? Do you think - do you think it might matter?”

David snores again, his long hair fluttering as he exhales, and Killian turns bleary eyes to the ceiling.

“Liam?” he whispers, shy, suddenly, that lost boy all over again begging for a brother’s favour. “Will you ask her? Did it matter?”

He falls asleep, his only answer in the wind that rattles at the doorframe, and trees that seem to whisper her name.

\--

_David hasn’t dreamed of her for years before this night, and he blames the rum. Blames the rum and the pirate for dragging her to the surface of his memories, her face cresting above the waves of pain bright and hopeful and more beautiful than the sun only to slip away again as his world shivers and quakes around him._

_The universe is crumbling. It’s the only explanation, the only thing he can think as he slashes and tears his way through corridors and men, his shirt soaked red with blood he daren’t identify and the air rent with the screams of the terrified and the dying._

_The realm is crumbling, and it’s all his fault._

_He pants out his news to the huddled remnants of their inner council, stands aside as their queen, his queen, steps forward, the whole world clutched in her pale hands, and entrusts their future, all their futures, into the glowing arms of the fae._

_“Her name is Emma,” she says, chin high and face fixed._

_Her name is Emma. The last words he ever hears her speak._

_Her name is Emma, and she means everything._

_The universe crumbles, and he watches it die in her eyes._

\--

The sun comes sharp through the shabby wooden shutters of David’s home as Killian startles to wakefulness, his aching body protesting miserably as he shifts in the chair.

David himself sleeps on, his face pillowed against the tabletop as he murmurs nonsense about snowstorms and gems, his fingers still wrapped around the last of the previous night's rum.

It's dawn, a bright spring day by all accounts, but whereas inside the air is full of David’s soft mumbles and the rumble of Killian’s belly, outside, the birdsong is silent.

A man doesn't live as long as Killian Jones has done without knowing danger when he finds it.

“David,” he hisses giving the other man's shoulder a shake. “David, where do you keep your sword?”

David’s only answer is to make a sound like a wood saw and tighten his grip on the rum bottle.

“Never mind. I'll improvise.” He hefts the iron poker from the fireplace, and stalks around the table to prod David with the blunt end. “Wake up, mate!”

David starts awake, peering at Killian through bleary eyes.

“What - what's going on? Why are you still here?”

“Had to pay my respects to my host didn't I?” hisses Killian. “But believe me, mate, I'm the least of your worries.”

“You're right about that,” David says, wincing. “What the hell was in that rum?”

“Cat piss, mostly likely,” Killian mutters. “Now - listen.”

David screws up his face in concentration, then shakes his head sharply, grimacing at the sensation.

“I can't hear anything.”

“No.” Killian adjusts his grip on the poker. “And isn't that just a touch peculiar?”

“I don't know what you - ”

David doesn't finish his sentence, barely has time to draw breath, before the door falls onwards in a shower of splinters, the unholy racket followed immediately by two large, brutish looking men that makes Killian’s heart sink to somewhere in the region of his toes.

“Killian Jones,” the first bellows, the sound reverberating through the small space. “You are under arrest for piracy on the orders of his most regal majesty King Eric!”

“Am I now?” Killian says, rocking back on his heels as he calculates the distance between the men and the door. “Good old Eric, he doesn't give up, does he?”

“You're wanted by the king?” David hisses, aghast. Killian shrugs.

“I'm wanted by everyone, mate.” He tests the weight of the poker, and offers the men a small bow. “Well, gentlemen, shall we?”

The two men look at each other, shrug, and lift their swords.

“Oh good,” Killian says, a wild sort of grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Nothing like a good fight to set you up for the day.”

Sword and poker meet in a clash of iron and steel, the smallness of the cottage and David’s nonplussed presence working to Killian’s advantage as he dodges and parries, his smaller stature allowing him to dip and weave until he’s turned the men and the door’s at his back, his escape route apparently clear.

“Give Eric my best,” he says brightly as he slip over the threshold - only for another hand to grab him by his collar and heave him up in the air, his feet dangling.

“Nice try,” crows his captor, sneering from the back of his horse. “But not this time.”

Killian’s two opponents come barrelling out of the cottage to cross their swords at his throat as he’s dropped unceremoniously to the ground.

“Told you it were him,” says a faintly familiar voice, and Killian looks up to see one of the patrons of the tavern - dried blood still congealed in his beard - standing beside another mounted king’s man at the clearings edge, pointing towards the cottage with a grubby hand. “And him, him too.”

David - who has apparently come outside to examine the tragic state of his door hinges - freezes.

“Excuse me?”

“They’re in cahoots,” insists the man, his face cracking into a smile. “Working together, ain’t they? Bet he knows about all sorts of treasure!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Killian and David say as one.

“I’d never work with a pirate!”

“I’d never tell any man where my treasures lie!”

But sure enough there’s a sword pointing at David’s chest now - one he looks at with almost regal disgust.

“What’s your name, man?”

David draws his shoulders back, his chin up, tosses his greying curls over his shoulder, and Killian knows - Killian _knows_ \- what he’s going to say next. Can see it in the wrinkle between his brows, the jut of his jaw, and he should have known. He should have _known_.

Who else would befriend a hapless, hopeless pirate? Drag him from a tavern and make him their friend?

Who else would have the luck to die for it?

“David,” he says. “King of Misthaven.”

_Well,_ thinks Killian. _Fuck._

(Like father, like daughter.)

There’s a long, pregnant pause after David’s announcement, followed by absolute guffaws of laughter from King Eric’s men.

“Pull the other one,” sniggers the one whose sword is at Killian’s throat. “It’s got bells on!”

“And I’m the Evil Queen,” snorts another. “Drop your weapons, shepherd. And you, Jones. We’ll see what the king thinks of your excuses.”

“What weapons?” asks David, holding his hands out to his sides. “I’ve come out to see what damage you’ve done to my property, not to fight.”

“Suit yourself,” grouses the guard, and shoves him up against the wall of the house, one arm heavy across David’s shoulders as he searches him.

“I probably shouldn’t bother, should I?” says Killian. His guard answers by turning the tip of his sword into his stomach. “I’ll take that as a no.”

He kicks the poker away towards the guard’s feet, smiling tightly as the the swordpoint begins to penetrate his leathers. “Steady on, mate. I’ve done as you asked.”

“And the rest, pirate,” sneers the guard. “I’m not an idiot.”

“How unfortunate, then, that you should look so like one,” Killian says, and pulls a dagger from his boot. “Better?”

“And the rest.”

Another dagger appears from the depths of his coat. The guard rolls his eyes and gestures with his sword to Killian’s midsection.

“ _All_ of it.”

Killian smirks, leaning as close as he dare over the sword and winking conspiratorially at the guard.

“As much as I hate to disappoint you, gentlemen, I was the victim of a rather unpleasant mutiny yesterday, and much of my weaponry has been - misplaced. Now, you can push me up against that wall and grope me like your dear friend is doing to Dave over there, but alas, the only pleasure to be found there is likely to be mine.”

The guard huffs, his face a little pink and flustered. Killian rocks back on his heels, satisfaction in the curl of his lip.

“Now that’s what I thought.”

“Take the hook.” It’s the man on horseback that speaks, the one at the edge of the clearing who watches with narrowed, shrewd eyes. “Pay no attention to his bluster. Just take it.”

“Take a man’s limb? Is that how it is with Eric these days?” Killian tuts sadly. “I thought him better.”

“You’d do better not to think of him at all,” says the man.

The guard moves to remove Killian’s hook, but he stops them with little more than a pointed glare, removing it himself and handing it over with a steady hand. He may feel bare without it, aware of his physical vulnerability in a way he hasn’t much had to be for centuries, but he’s no intention of letting them see that.

_Never let them see fear_ , Liam had taught him - oh, three lifetimes ago now. _Never let them believe they hold power over you, not even when they do._

It had been hard to believe then, a frightened boy in a dark and squalid hold under the control of cruel and despicable men, but now, his wrist lashed to his hand by ropes and then tied in turn to the vocally protesting David, he thinks it might be harder still.

“You’ll hang for sure,” says the guard who’d lashed them together, his eyes bright and practically salivating at the prospect. “I promise you that!”

“No mercy?” tuts Killian. “How very brutal of his Majesty.”

“Oh,” says the man on horseback, the one who’d confiscated his hook and who looks down at them through beady eyes. “You’ve seen nothing yet.”


	7. Another Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever all credit to my fantastic betas katie-dub and phiralovesloki and to my wonderful artist seastarved whose art can be seen attached to the tumblr post over at mahstatins.tumblr.com. Thanks for reading folks, hope you enjoy!

* * *

 

“Snow. White.” Eric lets the words roll over his tongue as he shakes his head slowly. “There's a name I never thought to hear again." 

“She's alive?” Ariel gasps out, her eyes sparkling, “We all believed - ”

“Everyone did,” Emma says sharply. “Or at least that's what they wanted to believe, but Regina swore she hadn't killed her.”

“And you believe her?”

“I held her heart in my hand,” snips Emma coldly. “She had no reason to lie.”

“She could have gone anywhere,” Eric says, frowning down at the map. “Your mother was a talented tracker herself and no mean shot. If she didn't wish to  be found, I have no reason to believe she would be.”

Ariel appears bereft at this, wringing her hands together and biting on her lip.

“She could have come for help,” she says, a tremor in her tone, “for sanctuary. I thought we were friends.”

“You were,” says Eric gently. “She would never have dragged you into a war that was hers to fight, Ariel.”

“But she's been alone,” Ariel half sobs, “and for so long!”

Emma looks down at the polished tabletop, concentrating on the whorls and knots in the wood as she swallows back a sudden rush of tears.

“I know how she feels,” she mumbles, and then, looking up, fierce determination in the line of her jaw, “so will you help me?”

“Of course,” Ariel says, coming around the table and taking one of Emma's hands in both of hers. “Anything.”

“And,” Eric grins, “I may have an idea of where to start.”

\--

“Are you quite sure about this?”

The royal coach judders and shakes its way along the pitted, mud-slick track that leads through the forest to such an extent that Emma finds herself flung violently against the door and clinging onto the window edge for dear life.

“Quite sure,” Eric assures her from where he's sitting, apparently comfortably, on the opposite seat. “Most of Snow White’s allies learned to keep their associations secret once Regina came to power, but this one - ”

He shakes his head, and Ariel smiles.

“He has a very loud mouth and an inversely low tolerance for mead.”

“Why wouldn't Regina just have killed him, then?”

“Why did Regina do anything?” Ariel asks, and shrugs a shoulder. “She never much cared for the little people, perhaps he was too far below her to notice.”

“Ariel!” Eric admonishes, and she turns to him, scandalised.

“What?”

“Don't be unkind,” he says.

Ariel huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. “I'm not being - ”

The coach shudders to a halt, the horses blowing in their traces, in front of a small stone cottage. There's someone at home, a thin stripe of grey smoke rising from the chimney and a lone white nanny goat tethered outside who _maas_ balefully at them as they alight.

Emma steps ahead to hammer on the door, only for it to swing open and reveal a balding man with a grey beard, who is only as tall as her shoulders and wears an expression like thunder.

“Whadda ya want?” he barks out. “Coming around disturbing a man's peace! Do you know what time it is?”

Emma blinks and looks down at her shadow. It’s short, and the sun is warm on the back of her neck.

“Midday?”

“Midday!” howls the man. Eric steps forward and pats him on the shoulder, the man watches his hand with a faintly disgusted expression.

“I know it's… early, but I hope you will understand why our request couldn't wait.”

“You want something from me?” he laughs shortly. “Jog on, sisters, and you, whoever you think you are. Coming around demanding things like you're royalty or something.”

Eric and Ariel share a look, but before Eric can open his mouth to speak Emma half shoves him out the way, her patience wearing short.

“We’re looking for Snow White,” she snaps. “Can you tell us where she is?”

The man’s red tinged face drains to white, his eyes flashing with terror and something fiercer, as he attempts to slam the door in Emma’s face. Eric catches it, smiling, not unkindly, as he pushes both door and man back.

“I'll take that as a yes,” says Emma.

“Listen, I ain't telling you nothing. I didn't tell the Evil Queen when she ripped my brother's heart out in front of me, I ain't telling you now. Do your worst, sister. I'm ready.”

He draws himself up to his full height and glares up at her. Behind her, the goat let's out a _maa_ of agreement.

Emma wonders what it must be like - what her mother must have been like - to engender such loyalty. What sort of queen she must have been, once, and her heart squeezes in her chest.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” she says softly. “I’m her daughter. The - ”

“Emma?” His eyes go wide. “You're alive?”

“More or less,” she says. “Will you help me?”

He opens the door.

\--

His name is Grumpy, which surprises her less than it ought to, and he's lived here alone with only the goats for company for twenty-eight years, his only solace found in dark corners of quiet taverns as he nursed the wounds of the battle that had taken her parents from their throne and from her.

Emma settles as best she can in the rickety undersized chair the dwarf offers her, trying not to smile at the way Eric’s knees rise up somewhere around his ears as he follows her lead. Grumpy looks uncomfortable and unsteady in her presence, bouncing his leg as he, too, sits.

“There was meant to be a curse,” he tells her as they take cautious sips of a thick, black drink scooped from a cauldron that hangs over a dying fire. “Your parents had a plan for that. But then she changed her mind, or it didn't work, I don't know, and the battle…” He shudders, finishing his drink in a single gulp. “It was a bad time, sister.”

“So what happened? After - ” she swallows back the words _they gave me away_. “After Regina won?”

Grumpy looks up at the ceiling, his expression far away, and Emma remembers the destroyed throne room, the pile of bones beneath the wreckage.

“I'm sorry, I don't mean to upset you.”

“You got to understand,” he says slowly, “the whole place seemed to collapse in on itself. We didn't know who was alive or dead. Snow was - ” he shakes his head. “Your father was her True Love, do you know what that means?”

Emma thinks of blue, blue eyes, the flash of steel, and swallows hard.

“I might have an idea, yeah.”

“When she thought she'd lost him, and you, she was beside herself. We brought her out here, my brothers and I, but she was half wild - shouting about finding him, not sleeping, not eating. We thought it was for the best.”

Emma's blood runs cold.

“Thought what was for the best?”

Grumpy shuffles uncomfortably on his stool.

“It wasn’t supposed to be permanent!” he insists. “We just wanted to help!”

“What,” hisses Emma through clenched teeth, “did you do to her?”

“It was just a little spell, something Dopey brought off a peddler. It was nothing major - just enough to take the edge off, you know?”

Ariel gasps. “You _drugged_ her?”

“No!” Grumpy squirms uncomfortably. “Well, only a bit. We thought it would help, and it - it did. She was better, after. In a way.”

Magic thrums through Emma’s veins, hot and sickening and turning her hands into fists.

“Better _how._ ”

“Well, she forgot, didn’t she?” Grumpy shrugs. “Just a little forgetting spell, how were we supposed to know?”

“Supposed to know _what_?” Emma growls.

“She forgot it all,” he says, and the nervousness in his voice is replaced by something not unlike real regret. “She forgot your father, and you, and us. She forgot her kingdom, she forgot the Evil Queen, she forgot _everything_.”

“That makes things a little more awkward,” Eric admits, “but hardly impossible. There will be an antidote somewhere, we will just have to find it.”

“You’ll have to find her first,” counters Grumpy. “She ran away, not long after. None of us have seen her since.”

“Did you bother looking?” Emma spits with a scowl. “She could be anywhere, she could be dead.”

“We didn’t think she’d want us chasing after her,” says Grumpy, but she can hear the lie in his voice.

“Or you were too afraid to, more likely. You just gave up!”

“Wouldn’t you?” he practically shouts it. “All that fighting, all that _effort,_ and we lost! We all lost! What was the point?”

She thinks of Killian again, of the fierce set of his jaw as he’d faced down the Dark One, of the softness in his eyes in the lamplight of their room, of this man who’d spent lifetimes sustained by nothing but bitterness only to teach her what it meant to hope, and swallows hard.

“There’s always a point,” Emma says, her voice low, her eyes fierce. “Even when things look hopeless you don’t give up, you can’t ever give up. That’s how they win.”

“You’re like her, you know,” Grumpy says softly, shaking his head. “Watching her lose her hope - ”

“I never had any to lose,” Emma admits, “not until recently.”

“I hope you never do,” he says sincerely. “I hope you never, ever do."

He gives them vague directions to someone - a fairy by all accounts, and that rings a bell in Emma’s mind too loudly to be discounted - who may be able to help track Snow or the witch who’d cursed her, but he hardly seems certain and struggles to meet any of their eyes as he shuts the door firmly behind them, a finality in the slam of wood against wood.

“I didn’t even know the fae were active anymore,” says Eric, furrowing his brow as he looks over toward the carriage. “I’d heard they were all dead, killed by the Dark One for some slight or other.”

“That’s what they like people to think,” grumbles Emma mutinously. “They’re tricky alright.”

“So do you think she’s worth speaking to? This fairy?”

Emma shrugs, scratching at her neck as she considers her options.

“Kill - my captain, he spoke about a fairy, too. He thought she might be able to help us.”

“And you think it’s the same fairy?”

“I think it’s worth finding out.”

\--

It wouldn’t be fair to sore thumbs to say that Eric and Ariel stand out like such in the grubby morass of the dockside marketplace, so incongruous are their fine clothes as a hundred fishwives hustle about their business, tarred ropes and tattered nets slung around leather brown necks while beady eyed men with nimble fingers watch from the shadows.

Emma, however, feels right at home. Almost.

It’s strange, the way she sees Killian behind every low wall, hears his voice, his old voice, that of the Feared Pirate Captain, booming above the shrill shriek of the fishwives hawking their wares. Her hand brushes leather and she stops in her tracks, her eyes screwed tight as she lets herself, just for one moment pretend, pretend, pretend.

But losing herself in wishes won’t find the fairy, and nor, by the look of it, will her royal companions.

“Uh, excuse - excuse me, good sir,” Eric calls after an old salt with a patch over one eye and a pronounced limp. “Have you by any chance seen any fairies?”

“Fairies? What the fuck you mean fairies?” the man grumbles before spitting at Eric’s feet. “We don’t hold with them sort here.”

“I say, there’s no need to be rude,” Eric says, rather aghast, as the man trundles on his way. Emma spares him a pitying sort of smile.

“People like these don’t have a lot of time for royalty, I’m afraid. Or magic, really. We might need to be a bit more… subtle.”

“Subtle how?” asks Ariel, her eyes tracking the movements of a dockside whore whose rouge would shame a circus performer. “Subtlety doesn’t look like it’s much in demand around here.”

“Maybe not,” agrees Emma, “but a fairy, out on her own and not under Blue’s purview? She won’t be willing to announce her presence to just anyone.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Emma watches the lady of the night as she primps her teased hair and throws a come hither wink at a passing fisherman, a gaudy necklace glinting in the sun and a large glass stoned ring on her finger.

“I’m not sure you’ll want to know.”

\--

“I’m looking for a girl,” Emma whispers, shoving Eric in the back towards where the woman is still touting her wares. “Come on.”

“I can't,” Eric mumbles from between clenched teeth. “I'm a king!”

“Oh, and kings never pay for it? For goodness sake, she doesn't know who you are!”

“My face is on every coin she's ever… earned!”

“Ugh,” Emma mutters, pushing past him and adjusting her own dress to better expose her own assets. “Men. If you want a job doing…”

She sidles up to the other woman, her arms folded over her chest as she sucks air between her teeth.

“Slim pickings, is it?”

“Slim enough,” grumbles the woman as she turns to eye Emma up. “You trade or buying?”

“Just getting the lay of the land, is all,” Emma demures. The woman scoffs.

“Well, get the lay of your own patch. Life's hard enough without skinny little blonde things sticking their tits where they ain't wanted.”

“Charmed, I'm sure,” says Emma brightly, and turns back towards the crowd where Eric’s pallid face can be seen peeking over the heads of passers-by.

“What was the point of that?” he hisses when she rejoins them, taking Ariel by the elbow and encouraging both to follow her to a nearby sheltered spot.

“Look,” Emma says, opening her clenched fist to reveal the ring that had been on the woman’s finger moments earlier. “Does this strike you as the sort of thing they sell around here?”

“Did you _steal_ it?” gasps Ariel, her hand going to her throat.

“You stick to what you’re good at and I’ll stick to what I am, yeah?” Emma huffs. “And I’m telling you, only a fairy would own something this…”

“Sparkly?”

“I was going for vile.”

“Alright,” Ariel says, “now what?”

Emma tucks the ring into the pocket of her cloak and risks a glance out into the main thoroughfare.

“If I know fairies like I think I know them, we won't have to wait long to find out.”

\--

It’s hardly a raucous party that’s taking place in the dingy little corner tavern that Emma heads to, the single room filled with elderly men in various states of inebriation and one very bored looking barmaid, but it’s enough to send Eric chivvying Ariel ahead of him back to the coach with a muttered “We’ll wait” that Emma isn’t certain she should believe.

It serves its purpose, though.

She makes sure to tap the ring against the bar as she orders a flagon of watery ale, letting the light catch it when anyone enters or leaves, until, eventually -

“Where’d you get that?”

Emma pastes an innocent looking smile on her face as the barmaid bends low over the table to get a closer look at the ring, her face a little too close to comfort.

“Oh this?” she giggles. “I found it, isn’t it pretty?”

“Pretty enough, that’s Lou’s ring, the one what the fairy gave her. If she sees you with it…”

“Oh!” Emma pretends to clutch at her heart, “I never meant to! Where is this fairy? I can return it! I would hate to upset anyone!”

“You’d do better to give it to Lou,” grumbles the barmaid as she stands up straight, “but perhaps she’d have your eye for it. Fairy keeps a little workshop of sorts, down the road a while. Lou’s fond of her, maybe that’s your best bet. She’s odd, though, no doubt.” The barmaid wrinkles her nose. “All that sort are.”

“Yes, of course,” Emma murmurs, all false gratitude as she gathers her skirts and leaves a pile of small change behind her, “I’ll go at once. Thank you so much.”

She manages to keep her steps fairly even until she’s safely away from the barmaid’s slightly confused stare before she’s bolting for the carriage, tearing the door open with such force she’s fairly sure she causes Eric’s heart to skip a half dozen beats.

“Good _gods_ , woman!” he cries, “What now?”

“Found the fairy,” Emma pants out. “Come on.”

“You know,” Eric calls as she barrels down the road ahead of them, “I’m a king! I have people who do this sort of thing for me!”

Emma throws a grin over her shoulder, feeling freer with the wind in her hair, the stolen jewel on her finger, than she has in weeks. Months.

(For a moment she thinks she sees Killian’s smile from the corner of her eye, feels his footsteps beside hers, and she feels _happy_.)

“How very boring.”

\--

The fairy’s workshop is easy enough to find. If the piles of half-welded, half-destroyed scrap metal outside the door hadn’t given it away, the high pitched bitter swearing coming from within almost certainly would have.

Nothing, Emma knows, annoys a fairy more than things not going their own way.

“Problem?” she asks as she walks through the door, her arms folded to give the fairy a good view of the ring on her finger.

The fairy stops in her tracks, unbending from where she was stooped over some gently steaming contraption of copper and iron, and pushes her sweaty fringe out of her eyes with ink black fingers.

“Depends,” she spits in her delicate voice, “on who are you, and _where_ ,” she jabs one grubby finger at the ring Emma wears, “did you get _that_.”

“This?” Emma taps the ring with a nail. “From a very, _very_ friendly lady down the docks. I hear you know her."

“I know a lot of people,” the fairy spits, “I’m not going to fight you over her, if that’s what you want. Overpriced, for a start.”

“I didn’t think your sort were into that type of thing.”

“What sort?” The fairy raises a brow. “Girls?”

Emma smiles, sly and a little smug.

“Fairies.”

The fairy drops her hands to her hips and scowls.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it? Who sent you? Blue? Because I told her - ”

“No,” Emma cuts her off. “Nothing to do with her. I was told you could help me.”

“Oh really?” The fairy wrinkles her nose. “And why would I do a thing like that?”

Emma takes a deep breath.

“Did you ever know a man called Killian Jones?”

\--

Her name’s Tinkerbell, but she has the sort of fierceness in her expression that stops any sniggers about it, and she has the sort of ethereal, ageless beauty of all her sort even under the layers of soot and grime from her workshop.

It doesn’t do much for Emma’s stinging jealousy when she throws back her head and laughs.

“So what’s the old dog gotten himself into now? Must be interesting if he’s going by his old moniker.”

“It’s his name,” Emma mutters, and the fairy shakes her head, still laughing.

“Was a time he’d run you through for using it, though - no matter the circumstances.” She looks up at Emma, suddenly shrewd. “Which you’d know, I suspect.”

“Don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Emma sniffs.

“Oh.” Tinkerbell winks. “I think you do. Tell me, does he still - ”

Ariel, either taking mercy on Emma as her face drains of colour or fearing the shedding of blood, interrupts with a gentle but firm, “I’m afraid the gentleman in question is dead.”

Tinkerbell’s mouth works wordlessly for a moment, but then she’s shaking her head again, her heel tapping on the floor. “Him? Never. Bring me his head on a platter and  I’d still never believe it.”

“It’s true,” says Emma, her voice smaller than she’d like it to be. “We were shipwrecked.”

Tinkerbell’s eyebrows raise up toward her hairline.

“Together?”

Emma shrugs.

“You must have been… close,” says Tinkerbell. “He hadn’t sailed with a woman since - ”

“Milah,” finishes Emma. “Yes, I know. We weren’t on the ship long. He was trying to help me find my parents. That’s where you come in.”

“Where were you before then,” asks Tinkerbell, ignoring Emma’s attempt to change the subject, “if you weren’t on the ship, I mean?”

_Home_ , Emma thinks without meaning to, _we were home._

“I have…” she pauses, wincing slightly, “a sort of castle? I’m just a caretaker though, and not a very good one, but if you help us - ”

Tinkerbell’s jaw drops.

“He lived in a _castle_?”

“It’s really not a very good castle,” Emma says, shuffling awkwardly, “I’m not - I mean we weren’t - Does it matter?”

“Does it matter that he gave up the sea?” Tinkerbell asks, aghast. “That he traded his _ship_ for you?”

“He traded his life for her,” says Ariel softly as Emma swallows hard, unable to speak past the sudden lump in her throat, her head spinning. “If you cared for him at all, will you help us?”

Tinkerbell’s jaw snaps shut, her expression carefully blank, and Emma wonders what the real story might be between Killian and this coal-smeared fairy.

“I owe him a favour, that much is true,” states Tinkerbell baldly. “And If he’s really dead… well.” She holds out a hand to Emma, who shakes it rather weakly in return. “I can repay the woman he loved.”

“We need to find Snow White - or  a witch who cursed her,” says Eric. “The dwarf - Grumpy - he said you may be able to help.”

“Did he now?” says Tinkerbell. “Well I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t keep powerful magical beings just hanging around in the back room. And anyway, if I knew where Snow White was I’d have turned her in for the reward years ago.”

“You wouldn’t!” Ariel gasps.

Tinkerbell’s eyes narrow shrewdly.

“Wouldn’t I? Some of us have to look out for ourselves.”

“My mother is cursed,” Emma snaps, “or - or something, we don’t know, but we’ve been told there’s a witch who has the spell to find her, and we were told _you_ could find us the witch.”

“Do I look like a mapmaker?” Tinkerbell scoffs. “There are a dozen or more witches out there who trade in magic dark enough to track a curse, but none of them are the sort you’d like to pop in on for tea.”

“You must have something that could help us find her though?” suggests Ariel encouragingly. “Fairies are magical beings, after all.”

“Fairies are,” admits Tinkerbell, “but I’m not, not anymore. Blue saw to that many years ago. If you’ve come to me for fairy magic, I’m afraid you’re shit out of luck.”

“Just cause you’re not a fairy as such, doesn’t mean you don’t have access to things,” says Emma, finally regaining her senses enough to slip the stolen ring from her finger and hold it out to Tinkerbell. “Or are you trying to tell me this was made by the local blacksmith?”

“So I’ve a few bits and pieces,” Tinkerbell admits. “So what? They’ve no power beyond what they can buy me. They’re useless.”

“Try me,” says Emma lowly. “You might not have magic, but I do.”

“Alright,” Tinkerbell finally acquiesces, turning to shuffles through the contents of one of the many drawers that line the workshop walls. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here.”

She turns back, holding a glass vial of a dark, shimmering powder up to the light.

“Fairy dust,” she says. “If you believe, it will take you where you want to go. Magic attracts magic,” Tinkerbell continues as she drops the vial in Emma’s waiting palm, “or at least that’s the idea, but this magic is dead.”

“And what magic does dead magic attract?” asks Ariel suspiciously, as she steps back slightly. Tinkerbell smiles wanly and shrugs one shoulder.

“I guess you’ll just have to find out, won’t you? But be careful. You’re dealing in cursed magic, and those who trade in it. Remember that they’re not a friendly bunch.”

“I guess we’ll just have to risk it.”

Emma is already turning to leave, Eric and Ariel close behind her, when she spots, pinned to the wall of the workshop among a hundred sketches and poorly blotted invoices, a wanted poster. The poster is frayed and yellowed with age, but the woman in the image still stares defiantly out at Emma, her hair dark, her chin held high. _For Treason_ , it says, _Snow White_

For the first day since the day of her birth, Emma gazes upon her mother’s face.

Her breath catches, her heart hammering against her ribcage as she stares into the facsimile of her mother’s eyes. She doesn’t know how good a likeness it is, doesn’t have a memory to compare it to, but she fancies for a wild moment that she has her mother’s chin.

“Good luck,” calls Tinkerbell, and the moment is broken, the door slamming shut as they step into the street.

She leaves the poster behind, but the eyes, the eyes seem burned onto her subconscious, the whispers from her dreams echoed in every step she takes.

_Emma, Emma, Emma._

_Find me._

\--

“It’s a lead,” Ariel says encouragingly, clutching at Emma’s hand as they make their way back to the carriage. “It’s more than we had this morning.”

“Yeah,” Emma mutters half-heartedly, “I guess.”

“What’s wrong?”

It’s a loaded question. Her head is swimming from Tinkerbell’s words, the enormity of Killian’s sacrifice suddenly clearer to her than it has ever been in the reflection of the fairy’s sheer disbelief, her heart heavy and leaden in her stomach as she thinks of the last words they exchanged, fractious and bitter. Of the words she’d never said, not once.

He’d loved her. He’d died for her.

And what had she done for those who’d sacrificed everything for her? Her parents, Killian, even Blue in her own twisted sort of way?

What sort of Saviour is she, if in the end all she leaves behind her is chaos?

What sort of person is she that even now, with no witnesses but Ariel and her kind eyes and gentle touch, she can’t bring herself to tell the truth.

_It’s me. I’m what’s wrong. I can’t save them. I can’t, I haven’t, I_ won’t.

“I don’t know - I just,” she shakes her head. “I spent all my life living in the woods, hand to mouth, with no idea of who I was or where I came from. It… really sucked.”

“And you don’t like to think of Snow in the same situation?”

“I don’t like to think of anyone living like that, if it hadn’t been for Killian - ” she shudders. “We have to find her.”

“We will,” Ariel says, and smiles. “Have hope.”

There’s the sound of approaching hooves, and then two men wearing the livery of Eric’s guard burst into the clearing, their horses’ flanks sweating and their own faces flushed with exhaustion.

“Your Majesty!” cries the first, “news from the northern border!”

“Yes, man? Speak.”

“You won’t believe it, Sire.”

“Well, you can but try to convince me,” Eric says jovially. “Have at it.”

The two men exchange a gleeful look, and the second clears his throat.

“We received a tip from a drunkard of that area, that a certain wanted man had been spotted causing trouble in a tavern.”

“You tease your king so, spit it out!” laughs Eric, and both men chuckle lightly before tearing Emma’s world down and yet rebuilding it with their next five words.

“Captain Hook is under arrest.”

\--

Her hands shake as she forces her legs into her breeches, the silk dress Ariel had leant her lying in a crumpled heap behind her as she struggles with the laces, her breaths coming quick and short and her heart pounding.

“They plan to hang him at dawn,” Ariel says from the doorway, her voice gentle even though her words cut like ice. “The prison is ten miles from here, and guarded well - Emma - ”

“Don’t tell me not to,” Emma says, “don’t.”

“I wouldn’t dare, but Emma, you must know that Eric will see this as a betrayal. He has lost so many ships to Hook, he will not look kindly on you helping him now.”

Emma spins to face Ariel, and the older woman almost seems to jump at the expression on her face.

“I won’t leave him to die,” she hisses, and Ariel bites her lip.

“Not even for your mother? Eric’s resources - ”

“Fuck his resources,” she spits, and then closes her eyes briefly before continuing as calmly as she can manage. “Listen, I’ve never had a mother. Never. But Killian - Killian I had. He was mine. If I can save him - “ her breath shudders. “If I can save him, I have to try.”

“Even if it means you never find your mother?”

Emma smiles bloodlessly.

“I have hope.”

Ariel sighs, looking over her shoulder before stepping over the threshold to Emma’s room and closing the door behind her.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she says, and Emma’s aching heart leaps, a real smile blooming across her face.

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”


	8. Blood on the Floor

When he’d been dragged from the cell they’d thrown him into almost as soon as they’d arrived and the guard had left David, bemused and enraged, behind, he’d assumed some sort of… personal treatment was in order. The rack, perhaps, or the whipping post. He was no stranger to either, after all.

He’d assumed the guard’s brutish manhandling of him as he practically threw his chained body down the courtyard steps had been due to frustration with the way Killian’s knees refused to buckle at the prospect, but then he’d seen the waiting crowd, heard the slam of the pillory being opened, and suddenly, he hadn’t been so sure.

“Is this is really necessary?” Killian asks as the prison guard as he’s bodily forced into the shackles of the pillory. “If I could just speak to the king, I’m sure he’d - ”

“King’s got nothing to do with this,” the guard spits as he slams the shackles down painfully hard on Killian’s bare wrist. “This is just a bit of fun, y’see.”

“Fun for who, exactly?” Killian chokes out as the collar tightens around his neck.

“Me, of course. Ain’t got a hangman’s stomach, so this is as good as I can get.”

“You’re taking this all very - very personally,” Killian gasps as the guard gives him a solid cuff around the back of his head and sets his ears ringing.

The man stands up straight and folds his arms.

“I had a lad, once. Brave he was. Stupid, perhaps. Joined the Navy didn’t he? Your lot got him on his first voyage.”

“My lot?”

“Pirates,” the man spits, “Dirty, filthy pirates. Scum of the Earth, every last one of you, and  _ you _ , oh,  _ you _ are going to feel it.”

“Marvel at the great pirate Captain Hook!” he bellows to the crowd. “Come see him in all his glory! Shall we thank him, one and all, for his years at sea? Shall we show him our gratitude for his treatment of our fine navy?”

The crowd snarls and  jeers, seething with hatred, as someone pushes a large wicker basket before the pillory.

“You’ve made your point,” Killian grits out from between his teeth. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your son.”

The man leans forward, his hands on his knees, and smiles.

“Too late.”

The sharp, wet smack of the first putrid vegetable sends his head reeling to the right and he grits his teeth against the sting of the laughter that follows.

“Good shot!” someone calls. “Get the stump, go on!”

A howl of agreement, and then the frame judders under the onslaught of half-black turnips and slime-coated lettuce. Killian struggles to keep his eyes open and his mouth closed as they rain down on him, acid sending his vision blurry and his head throbbing under the onslaught.

He thinks he sees, just for a moment, a young boy stood by the basket, a rotten apple in his hand as he seems to consider his shot, and over the cheers of the crows, over the thundering of his own blood, he thinks he can hear Liam calling his name.

_ “What you doing? Killian? Killian!” _

_ The weight of the apple in his hand, the bruise blackened face of the man in the stocks, and Liam, Liam behind him, his hand on his shoulder, his guiding light. _

_ “Why?” he asks, and Liam’s reply is as grim and as tight as his grip as he pulls him away. _

_ “You can’t know another man’s story, Killian.” _

_ Yes, brother _ , he thinks, his eyes closing as something harder, sharper, slashes his cheek.  _ I can _ .

\--

Killian’s only respite after the humiliation of the pillory is a barrel of icy water thrown over his head and thin prison-issue garb before he’s tossed back into the cell he shares with Dave, the promise of their looming execution on the guard’s gleeful lips.

That was three days ago, and this morning is to be the last they’ll ever see.

“Hung,” says David for the fifteenth time since dawn had risen and brought a breakfast of mackerel and eggs to the condemned men’s cell. “I’m going to be  _ hung _ .”

“Hanged, actually,” says Killian with false cheer. “Thought a king might know that, but that’s royalty for you,” says Killian as he picks the bones out of his fillet. “Never appreciate their education, and all about the capital punishment until it’s  _ their  _ necks on the block. Perhaps if King Eric had been hugged more as a child we wouldn’t be in this position.”

“I’m a shepherd,” David says with a scowl, “About to be  _ hung  _ like a piece of mutton, and for what? Associating with a pirate? Perhaps if  _ you _ hadn’t dragged me into this mess, I’d be at home!”

“With what, your sheep?”

“Do you have any idea,” David seethes, “what it feels like to give up? To lose everything you’ve ever loved in one fell swoop? Yes, I’d be at home with my sheep! My sheep are all I have!”

Guilt itches at the back of Killian’s neck, and he considers telling David right then, about the daughter who’d grown up to be the Saviour, the determination with which she’d set out to find her father. Her certainty that somewhere, somehow, this man’s True Love is still alive. 

Waiting.

But that means telling him how Killian has failed them. How Killian watched this man’s daughter sink to the depths. How fate took her, in a way, as assuredly as it will take this man, this good-hearted shepherd King, for the sin of daring to bestow an ounce of kindness on the undeserving soul of Killian Jones.

Of admitting that Snow White will wait forever, and David is helpless to prevent it.

“Rather a desperate turn of events all around, if you ask me.” Killian says instead, shaking his head. “No. I’m sorry, your Majesty, I truly am, but I didn’t ask you to brain that bloke, did I? I wasn’t to know just being in my presence is a death sentence nowadays.”

“Your presence encourages poor choices,” says David, and shoves his plate away, “so I shouldn’t be surprised. How can you eat at a time like this?”

“Well, there’s not much else to be done about it,” Killian says with a shrug. “And it’s pretty good, you sure you don’t want any?”

“Am I sure - ” David sucks a breath between his teeth. “Do you even  _ have  _ a plan to get out of here?”

Killian drops his fork and any attempts at pretense, his expression darkening as he looks out of the barred window towards the shadow of the gallows.

“None whatsoever.”

“So what, you’re just going to die?”

“Maybe it’s time,” he says. “I’ve lived a long, long time, mate, and there’s more I love waiting for me there than there is remaining here.”

“Me, too,” says David, letting his head hang back against the stone wall. “I never thought I'd be scared, you know? I thought - I thought when it was time, I’d be ready. Ready to join Snow. And yet - ” He lets his head loll to the side. “Are you so sure they’re waiting for you?”

“I’m not a priest,” Killian says. “Far from it. But I’d like to think - what’s the alternative, eh? Nothing? Can’t be worse than here.”

“Can’t it?” asks David, and sighs. “I wish I knew, that’s all.”

Killian swallows hard and looks at his feet, bare apart from the chain around his ankles. He doesn't know if his next words are cruelty or comfort, but he knows he can't go to the gallows with them unsaid. Not when David’s desperation is so familiar to him.

He wishes he knew, too.

“Your daughter - Emma - ” he stops, pausing to swallow the ache that seems to follow her name. “What if I told you I know that she’s waiting for you?”

“How would you know that?” David laughs grimly, then his brow furrows. “How do you know her name?”

“Because,” Killian sighs. “I rather hope she’s waiting for me, too.”

“You know  _ Emma _ ?” David says, scrambling up onto his knees. “How?  _ Why? _ Are you telling me she’s - ” His mouth works helplessly around the last word, his face bright red.

“Gone?” Killian winces at the word. “Aye. I loved her, but I couldn’t save her. Couldn’t save any of them.” He looks back out of the window. The clouds are gathering now, the wind picking up. It won’t be long. “Not even myself.”

“What do you mean, you loved her?” asks David, rearing back against the wall of the cell, his already pale face blanching to the colour of the stone behind him. “What happened - what did you do to her!”

“Nothing,” Killian insists, shaking his head against the implied accusation even as guilt makes his last meal sit unsteady in his stomach. “Nothing she didn’t ask me to! I was her - ” and it’s his turn to pause, the words tripping over themselves to escape and yet none of them quite right -  _ lover, consort, captain _ \- “friend!” His shoulders sink, the realisation stinging at the back of his eyes. “I was her best friend. And she was mine.”

“And she was alive,” David says softly, his eyes far away. “And you loved her.”

“I did. I do.” Killian shakes his head. “We were looking for you, you know. I don’t think this is quite the reunion she had in mind.”

“Looking for  _ me _ ?”

“Aye. You and the Lady Snow.” He smiles, a sad, wistful little thing, but genuine enough. “We were neither of us cut out to rule. Emma had the idea that the two of you may be better suited. I don’t think she was expecting - well.”

He gestures to David, but he’s too busy gaping to take any offence.

“But Snow’s - and Regina, is she - ”

“Dead, mate?” Through the window they hear the sound of a hundred or more feet skittering over the cobbles, voices raised in excitement, as the dark figure of the hangman strides past their cell door. “Aren’t we all?”

\--

The crowd that forces its way through the prison gates and into the courtyard ebbs and flows like a sea of humanity baying for blood, small children propped on their father’s shoulders, young girls shrieking with laughter at their friends.

Emma spits bile over the parapet above their heads, and hopes it lands in their eyes.

“This is entertainment?” she hisses. Ariel wrings her hands, her long red locks covered in a heavy cloak.

“It’s been a hard winter,” she says. “The suffering - ”

“Clearly wasn’t enough,” Emma growls.

“Emma, please,” Ariel pleads, “you must remember that this is a seafaring nation - these people have lost many loved ones to pirates - and your Killian Jones is no innocent man.”

“I told you,” Emma says, her eyes flicking over the crowd, searching for something, anything, that might act as an escape route. “He’s changed.”

“And I believe that,” says Ariel. “That’s why I’m here.”

“I know.” Emma reaches out and squeezes Ariel’s hand. “I know what you’re risking for us. Thank you.”

“As I said, I’m an old romantic,” Ariel says, and then adds wryly, “and completely mad.”

She pulls a steel hook from the confines of her cloak, handing it over to Emma with a wink and a smile.

“Please don't ask what I had to do to get that.”

Emma squeezes the metal tightly, and tucks it into the waist of her breeches.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Ariel shakes her head. “Don't thank me yet.”

There’s a last push from the rear of the crowd, and then the iron gates are drawn shut behind them with an ominous creak, a hush falling over the crowd as the hangman strides out onto the gallows.

“I’ll spare you as much time as I can,” whispers Ariel, “but the rest of it’s up to you. Don’t get caught.”

“I won’t,” Emma says, watching the loop and the turn of the ropes as they’re attached. Two of them. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Easier said than done,” mutters Ariel, and she turns to scurry down a staircase to join the masses below leaving Emma alone with nothing but her roiling stomach for company.

She hasn’t got a clue what she’s doing. No plan, no resources, just a view of a gallows, and the sure and certain knowledge that she won’t survive watching him die, and someway, somehow, that’s going to have to be enough.

She’s still got her sword, and her dagger tucked into her breeches, she’s still got her wits - such as they are right now - and she’s got Ariel’s sworn promise of distraction. At her feet are a couple of half barrels, mainly empty after a rainless few days - and the flag of the Maritime Kingdom flutters in the breeze from a flagpole that juts up beneath her.

She sees more than hears the frisson of excitement that runs through the crowd as the metal doors of the prison grind open, people standing on their tiptoes and elbowing each other for a better view of the damned men as they're dragged out onto the dais.

There's an older man with graying curls and a mutinous expression who shakes his captors' hands from his shoulders and stands surveying the crowd like a man who’s found himself in a terrible dream, his bearing almost regal despite the way his hands are tied behind his back, and then - and then - there's Killian.

If the other man looks mutinous, then Killian's expression can only be described as - well,  _ cheerful _ . He nods to the crowd, throws a wink to the young girls who've pushed their way to the front, and practically swaggers his way to his own death.

She wouldn't have expected anything else, not really. Once a showman, always a showman, but this isn't a swan song she's prepared to witness.

The barrel wobbles beneath her as she tests her weight against it, her focus split between where the older man appears to have chosen to berate Killian with his last words and the gentle sway of the flagpole.

If she misses this, she isn’t going to be witnessing anything. Ever again.

No pressure.

She waits for the moment Ariel mounts the dais, the little hand gesture the two of them had agreed upon the only hint that the queen isn’t truly there to pass final judgement on the ne’er do wells alongside her, leans forward, and jumps.

She hits the flagpole with a clatter, tangling herself helplessly in the flag as she scrambles for grip before clinging on to the wooden pole like an infant chimera to its mother’s back. The crowd at the base of the flagpole looks up in shock as the pole begins to sway alarmingly beneath her sudden weight, and she sort of grimaces down at them in a way she hopes is reassuring. A small child opens her mouth as though to scream and Emma shakes her head furiously, struggling to press a finger against her lips. Luckily, Ariel takes the opportunity to clear her throat, and their attention is drawn back to the gallows.

“Citizens of the Marine Kingdom,” she begins in her bell-like voice as Emma begins to shimmy indelicately down the pole. “It is always a sorrow for my husband and I to proceed with events such as these, but it is our duty to see that justice is done for the - ” Emma slips, only her right elbow catching in the rope stopping her from falling the fifteen feet to the ground below, and Ariel stumbles. “For the good - and the - the glory - ” Emma untangles herself enough to slide another five feet, and is judging the remaining drop when the hangman moves to cover Killian and the other man’s faces with the rough sacking hood they’re to die in. Killian’s mouth is moving, she can see it from here even though she’s no hope of hearing him, and gods help her but it looks like  _ Emma _ .

“I’m coming,” she says, all air and fear leaving her in a single breath, and falls.

\--

He remembers the queen, not like this - oddly nervous, her hands twisting in the silk of her cloak as she condemns the already dead - but younger, bolder, with a tail made of shining scales and a passion beyond his tormented understanding. He wonders for half a moment if he shouldn’t appeal directly to her, for Dave’s sake if not his own, but her eyes are fixed firmly on the crowd, her back forever turned to him, as David continues to mutter pointless threats beneath his breath.

“If there is an afterlife,” David hisses, “I will kill you in it, be sure of that.”

“That would be more frightening if it weren’t for the noose,” Killian mutters out of the side of his mouth. “It rather takes priority.”

“I can  _ make  _ it frightening,” David assures him. “You wait.”

“You’re assuming I’ll see you there,” Killian adds. “Rather hopeful of you, but thanks anyway.”

“That’s enough,” spits the hangman. “Her Majesty is speaking and your breaths are numbered. Save ‘em.”

“For what?” snipes David, and his head is covered by the hanged man’s hood.

Killian swallows hard, and for a moment lets his eyes close, runs through the faces he can only hope are waiting for him on the other side. His mother, Liam, Milah.

Emma.

He opens his eyes one last time as the hood descends, and for one moment he thinks he can see her, a vision floating above the crowd, her golden hair wild in the breeze, and then he sees no more.

\--

She scrabbles to her feet as the drums begin to roll, their thunder rolling out as the crowd surge onto their tiptoes, all desperate for a glimpse of death at work. Elbowing her way through them, hand tight on her sword’s pommel, she finds herself fervently muttering aloud, her breaths cut short and quick in desperation as though she's willing him to hear her somehow even if it's the last thing he ever hears.

_ I love you I love you I love you I love you. _

She's never told him. Never. And the drums reach a crescendo, the crowd surges forward, tears running hot down her cheeks, Ariel’s frightened face blurred and distorted.

The hangman pulls.

The trapdoor drops.

The world stops.

She doesn’t know how she gets from twelve feet away to the gallows in less than a breath, nor why the hangman is bleeding at her feet, only that the ropes are swinging and their feet are twitching and her sword is sharp, sharp sharp as she slashes the first man down. Somebody’s screaming, several somebodies, the whole world, probably, but it’s far away - only  _ I love you _ on her white, cracked lips as she rips off the hood.

The man stares up at her through bloodshot, watery eyes, as she throws him aside.

“Not you,” she hisses, and maybe he balks at that - she feels like he balks at it, his rheumy gaze fixed on her - but she hasn’t time to care. Another swipe, another clatter of bone against wood, and she’s dragging him to her, her tears wet against his sackcloth skin. She rips off the hood only to realise that beneath he’s too pale, blueish lips and still lashes, a violent, livid mark at his throat where the rope has tightened.

“Don’t be dead,” she whisper-sobs, her sword abandoned as her hands rove over his too still chest. “Don’t be dead. I’ll kill you.”

“Emma?” The other man is behind her now, her sword in his hand. “Emma, is that you?”

“Don’t be dead,” is all she can manage, and he shakes his head, the movement jerky like a man rising from a dream.

“You need to go!” Ariel, still stood at the front of the gallows, her arms held out placatingly towards them as though warding off enemies of the crown, speaks through gritted teeth, her eyes wild. “The guards!”

And sure enough over the echoing screams and gasps of the crowd and her own panicked breath, Emma can hear the approach of chainmail and hooves.

“I can’t,” she says, her fingers tight in the worn fabric of Killian’s shirt, “I can’t leave him.”

“Then you’ll die with him!” 

“Emma, please,” entreats the stranger, “it’s too late.”

“No.” The guards are upon them she imagines, Ariel frantically thinking of a way to keep them back a moment or two longer, but it doesn’t matter. “No,” she mumbles, “I just got him back.”

She squeezes her eyes tight against the tears that keep falling, takes a deep breath, and presses her lips to his cold ones to breathe life into his lungs - once, twice, three times. 

“Don’t you dare,” she pleads, and behind her heavy footsteps mount the gallows, loud voices, large hands that reach out and grab at her clothes.

She has no idea how she does it, only that she does, her hands thrown out in front of her as she twists around and lightning streaking through the air. The crowd scream as one, the sound of a hundred frightened pairs of feet thundering through the wood beneath her as she scrunches her face up in concentration, the white light from her fingertips sending the guards wincing backwards.

“No,” she pants out. “I don’t think so.”

The swords that the guards had been holding are ripped free and arc towards her, the men’s astonished expressions the last thing she sees before she grabs hold of Killian’s sleeve with one hand and hooks her ankle around his companion’s leg, closing her eyes and willing the fire within her to  _ get us out of here, get us out of here  _ please!

The screaming stops, suddenly, replaced by the sound of bird call and the drip, drip, drip of rain falling softly through the canopy.

Her sword drops to the floor with a dull thud, the man who had been holding it staring around himself in bemused wonder, but she only has eyes for Killian, only cares for the slight pink plush returning to his cheeks, the flutter of his eyelids as he draws first one rasping breath and then another.

“Don’t you dare leave me,” she hisses again, “not ever, do you hear?”

He smiles, a small uptick at the corner of his mouth.

“Never, love. Never.”

“Good,” she snaps, and thumps him hard enough in the shoulder to send him roiling and wretching against the forest floor.

“Oh, shit, shit I didn’t mean - “

“It’s quite alright, love,” he gasps out once his stomach is empty. “No doubt I deserve it.”

“No doubt you do,” grumbles the other man. “Are you always this much of a drama queen?”

“It’s a habit that doesn’t only apply when at death’s door, I’m afraid. Why, does that put you off wanting to kill me?” he manages, before coughs wrack his body. Emma rests her hand on his back and scowls up at the other man.

“Who are you?” she asks sharply, rubbing firmly between Killian’s shoulder blades as he hacks into the grass. “And how the fuck did we get here? Was that me? How - ”

The man’s jaw twitches, and he shrugs in a poor showing of nonchalance. 

“Damned if I know. There was smoke - and this bright light - and then,” he gestures around them, “we were here. Wherever here is.”

“Magic,” Killian says, smiling up at Emma between coughs. “That’s my girl.”

She shakes her head, but he nods, wincing at the action. 

“You might not know how you did it, Swan, but you saved us all. Again.”

“The Saviour,” says the other man, the word falling out on a long breath, his eyes wide. “It’s true.”

“I don’t do autographs,” she says sharply, “but you’re welcome, I guess.”

“No, I - ”

“Swan,” says Killian, something bright and cheeky and delightfully comforting flickering to life in his gaze, “I’d like you to meet my new mate.”

“I’m not your - ”

“Dave, meet your daughter. Swan, King David of Misthaven.”

“Wait, what?” Emma's jaw drops, the blood draining from her face as she stares up at the man she rescued entirely by accident. The man with long, grey blond hair and a set to his shoulders that makes her muscles twinge in recognition. “ _ You're  _ the King of Misthaven?”

“No,” he says, his voice cracking, “not for a lifetime - but Emma, oh Emma, I thought you were dead.”

He scoops her up from the floor and into his arms, his hand cradling the back of her head as though she's an infant, and she stiffens instantly, the feeling both awkwardly unfamiliar and strangely right. He holds on regardless, his arms shaking slightly as he holds her tight.

“Where did you go?” he asks, the words pressed into the crown of her head. “Where have you been?”

“I rather think that's a question she's been planning to ask you, mate,” Killian says, still crumpled forward on the forest floor, and Emma forces herself to pull back from the embrace.

“Something like that,” she says. “You never found me.”

“I didn't know I could,” David says, and she can see the truth in his eyes, hear it in the gaps between his staggered breaths. “If I'd known, Emma, if I'd known - ”

She steps back, her palm held up between them, and shakes her head. It hurts, the thought of him wondering, looking,  _ wanting _ her, hurts deep in a part of her soul that she'd thought she'd buried long ago, and she can't face it. Not now, lost in the wilds with this man who claims to be her father and Killian wheezing at her feet

“Not now,” she says as his eyes widen in disappointment. “Not - not never, but not now.

“Alright,” he says, and reaches down to pick up her sword, handing it back to her with a bow of his head. He lifts the two guardsmen’s swords that have accompanied them to wherever the hell they are, testing the weight of them and smiling slightly. “Where to?

“Anywhere,” she says, and heaves Killian to his feet, shifting her weight as he leans heavily against her. “Literally, anywhere.

“Together?” he asks hopefully, swinging Killians other arm over his shoulder, and she manages a smile

“Together.”


	9. Welcome Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smuty smutting in here folks, so be aware!

Anywhere is a barn, not derelict enough to be truly abandoned, but in a bad enough way that they can be reasonably sure of a few hours rest. Nonetheless, Emma is quick to fumble with the buckles of Killian’s brace, breathing out a private sigh of relief when his hook is firmly back in place at his side.

David settles himself against the rings of an old ladder that leads up to a hayloft and jerks his head upwards.

“He looks terrible. Get some rest.”

“Oi,” Killian grouses, wobbling slightly as Emma dares to let go of him for a moment. David lifts his brows. 

“My point.”

“But what about you?” Emma asks, eyes raking over his exhausted expression. “You've had - ”

“A hell of a day, yes. But I'm used to watching over sheep for days at a time. I'm sure I can manage.”

“If you're sure…”

“I'm sure. Go.”

Emma looks between his determined face, Killian’s unsteady posture, and the rotting ladder and furrows her brow.

“Hang on,” she tells Killian, gripping his arm firmly. “I've got an idea.”

“I'd rather not know,” she hears David grouse under his breath, as she wills her magic to listen.

_ Rest,  _ she tells it.  _ Safe _ . And they're enveloped in a cloud of white-grey smoke that dissipates to reveal the straw strewn floor of the hay loft.

“Well,” she says, eyes wide, “would you look at that?”

Killian sighs beside her, the sound ending on a wheeze that makes her heart sink, and she sets to work.

The straw isn’t all that fresh - damp and a little musty as she flings it into the largest, softest pile she can manage - and the walls of the barn creak terribly, the gaps between the wooden boards letting through sharp breezes and bright moonlight in equal measure. None of it matters, though. Nothing matters but the man clinging to her arm.

“I’m not an invalid, Swan,” he complains, his voice still wrecked, proving himself a liar by the way he leans heavily against her. “I can make my own bed.”

“Not planning on sharing then?” she mutters, trying to fluff the straw into something vaguely pillow like. 

He sighs, and the act makes him cough, a terrible, hacking thing that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

“That isn’t what I meant,” he manages when he’s able to catch his breath, and she turns to him, her hand gentle against the raw mark on his neck.

“I know,” she says softly. “And that isn’t what I meant either. Just let me take care of you, just this once. I swear you can be as contrary as you like tomorrow, but Killian - ” It’s her turn to choke now, the words lying thick in her throat. “If it hadn’t been for Ariel - ”

“Aye,” he says, with some of his old cheek, “I did say the mermaids would help, didn’t I? Although this isn’t - ” he coughs, “isn’t quite what I had in mind.” 

“Don’t joke,” Emma hisses, fisting her hand in his shirt, “I thought you were dead.”

Killian’s body seems to sag. 

“To be quite honest, love. So did I.”

She lowers him down to the makeshift bed as gently as she can, her fingers ghosting over the marks at his wrists, her brow furrowed at the way he shivers in the draft.

“I wish it were warmer.”

“If it were, it might be harder to be certain I’ve not descended below, Swan. Not,” he adds as her expression darkens at the implication, “that I’d expect such an angel to attend me there.”

“If you’re trying for smooth, it’s not working,” she says, shedding her overcoat and tucking it neatly beneath his shoulders and at the crease of his elbows. “You can’t flirt your way out of this state.”

Killian grimaces, shifting until his hand is free and tugging gently at the ends of her hair as she leans over him. “Certain? Because it is a little chilled, Swan, and I’ve heard wonderful things about body heat.”

He smirks, but it’s a pale, exhausted thing, the tilt of his mouth making the bruises stand out brighter, the smudges under his eyes only more defined by the crinkles that appear there, and she’s filled with the sudden urge to climb under with him, to strip herself as naked as the exhaustion in his eyes and surrender herself to the fire between them until everything burns to nothing in the inferno.

And life is short. So, so short, and so fragile, that even though he’s exhausted, the mark at his throat taunts her with how close she came to losing him and she finds herself helpless to resist.

“Alright,” she says, pulling her shirt over her head and smiling wickedly as his eyes widen. “Better keep the noise down, yeah? We’ve neighbours.”

“Your  _ father _ ,” Killian splutters as her breeches are flung across the loft space. “Emma - ”

“Emma what?” She sits back on his thighs, one hand cupping a breast, and quirks her eyebrow in her best impression of the man beneath her. “I didn’t take you for a coward, Captain. It was your idea.”

He groans, a long, desperate thing, and arcs his body up to kiss her. His lips are dry, his kisses more needy, not as considered or precise as usual, his hand trembling as he struggles with the rough blanket between them and casts it aside. Emma soothes him as best she can, her own hands firm and steady across the planes of his chest, no hesitation as she slides them lower and beneath the thin cotton of his prison issue breeches.

“I miss the leather,” she murmurs, slipping lower as she takes him in hand, the heat of him in her palm a vivid reassurance of life. “But there's something to be said for easy access.” She lets just the tip of him lie against her tongue, waiting for the telltale catch of breath and the fluttering close of those dark lashes before pulling away to breathe, “Let me take care of you?”

He nods, his hand ghosting against the length of her hair, and she lets herself drop to her elbows, her own eyes closing as she sucks and laves at him.

He's silent but for the occasion whimper, his hand fisted in the straw of their poor bed as she works mouth and hand over him, her own arousal rising into a dull roar even as her mind works overtime, the words she still struggles to say slipping out in the way she marks him as her own.

She presses  _ I thought you were dead  _ into the sensitive spot at the ridge of his cock, writes a thousand  _ I missed you _ s with each swipe of her tongue, and when he shudders beneath her, she feels her heart throb  _ I love you  _ with every pulse of his release.

“Emma,” he gasps, his hand cradling her head as she swallows, her eyes still closed. “Emma, look at me.”

She blinks, shocked at the film of tears she hadn't realised she'd shed, and watches a tired smile work its way over his face.

“I missed you, too,” he says.

She sits up, her shoulders straight, and brings her knees up to rest at his flanks, her arousal hot against his belly.

“Yeah?” she says. 

“Aye.” His face is still soft, but there's a hint of steel in his tone, his eyes dark and lust ridden as he curls his hook beneath her knee and pulls her further up his body. “Allow me to prove it?”

She can’t help herself, laughing as he pulls her closer and she falls back on her elbows, her legs falling open until she’s spread before him.

“What was that about being quiet, love?” She raises an eyebrow, and his smile turns feral. “Care to make a bet?”

“Why not,” she says, grinning down at him. “Either way, I win.”

“Oh, darling,” he croons, rising up until her legs are over his shoulders and she’s lying back against his body, his half-hard cock resting against her cheek. “There are no losers here.”

She licks her lips as his cock twitches, her nails digging into his sides as he begins to work her with his mouth, and she figures there’s more than one way to keep quiet.

He lets out an ungodly moan as she turns to run her tongue along his length, but her breathless little laugh of victory is cut short as he parts her thighs further with hook and hand and presses the flat of his tongue hard against her clit before flicking across her just roughly enough to make her back arch.

“Minx,” he mumbles, the vibrations of his words making her shiver. “I swear you’re  _ trying _ to get me killed.”

“You don’t need my help with that,” she gasps out as he brings his hook into play to hold her open as he flicks relentlessly against her, the cool metal sending shudders along her spine. He pauses, and she looks down at him along the line of her belly only to see him wink.

“Then shush.”

Emma turns her head, opens her mouth, and for once, does as she’s told.

\--

Afterwards, they lie, sticky and sated, with Emma’s cheek pillowed against Killian’s still rapidly rising chest, their legs tangled together and the blanket long since discarded.

“Quite the picture for your father to walk in on, Swan,” Killian had said when he’d tried to tug the blanket back over them, but she’d simply shook her head, unable to care about things like dignity, and company, and a man who may or may not be her father, when she was warm and comfortable and curled up in Killian’s arms.

“I’m not moving,” she’d said, and Killian hadn’t pressed the issue.

Now the cool draft from dusk has turned almost icy in the dark of night, and Killian’s large hand against her back can only do so much to chase the goosebumps away.

“At least take your coat back,” he says lowly as she burrows her cold nose closer into his side. “You’ll freeze.”

“Don’t care,” she mutters, her head rising and falling as he sighs.

“Emma…”

“Don’t.” She looks up, surprised to find her eyes are already wet as she struggles for the words she needs. “I thought you were dead.”

“You mentioned.”

“No - I - I truly thought you were gone, and I - I realised something.”

He sits up slightly against the straw, the lines around his eyes relaxing as he smiles down at her. “Go on.”

“I was angry at you,” she admits. “Furious. I thought you had kept those things - the dagger, the heart - because you didn’t trust me, didn’t want me around - ” He moves to speak, his brow furrowing, and she rests a cool fingertip against his lips. “No, no don’t. Let me - I’m not good at this, you know.”

“I entirely beg to differ,” he mumbles, pressing the tip of his tongue against the pad of her finger. “You’re really very impressive.”

“Not that, idiot. I know I’m good at - but anyway. Killian, I was so mad at you. Blue had said -”

“What did she say?”

“That you were,” she bites her lip, “being indiscrete. With the kitchen girls.”

His eyes go wide. “And you  _ believed _ her? I was teaching them letters, Swan, had you asked...”

“No! Well… maybe, just a little, but I thought - I knew you. I knew you wouldn’t betray me. But then I found the heart and the dagger and I -”

“I know.” He lets his head flop back, his hand coming up to tangle in her hair. “You were right to be. I knew I should have cast those accursed items off the highest tower the moment those two villains were banished, but I - ”

“But what?”

“Would you believe, Swan, that I was afraid?”

“You?” she laughs, twisting her fingers in the fabric of his shirt. “I thought Captain Hook was never afraid.”

“Maybe not,” he says, running his hand over her shoulder to rest over her own. “But Killian Jones is.”

“What of?”

“You.” She goes to move back, but he holds her in place, his hook sending goosebumps up her spine as he presses the curve of it into her hip. “Don’t misunderstand me, Emma. I’ve no fear of death or battle, but  _ you _ . You fill me with a terror I haven’t felt in centuries. I couldn’t bear -  _ didn’t  _ bear - losing you.”

“You won’t lose me,” she says with an almost venomous certainty. “You won’t. You and I, we’re a team.”

He sighs again, and she feels the calming reverberations through her body as he relaxes beneath her.

“As you wish,” he says, and she burrows ever closer into his side.

“I do,” she tells him. “I really do.”

(He’s asleep before she realises she still hasn’t told him she loves him.

She doesn’t wake him.)

\--

The sun breaks through the gaps in the walls and casts them both in stripes of golden light, the brightness stinging Emma’s eyes as she struggles towards wakefulness. Her face is still pillowed against Killian’s chest, although at some point in the night he must have moved in order to wrap her in their makeshift blanket - his bare skin is cool where it lies in shadow, and it scares her, her fingers tightening in his chest hair as she searches for a heartbeat.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he murmurs, his eyes still closed. “I’m still just here.”

Emma tries to surreptitiously wipe an escaping tear away without him noticing, and drops a kiss just above his heart. 

“Good.”

He lets out a long sigh, tightening his arm where it rests over her hip, and she thinks for a moment he’s about to sit up, but instead he just rolls them until they’re lying side by side and burrows his face into the space between her breasts.

“I missed you,” he mutters, presses into her skin, “You would have been my last thought - my last wish, Emma - ”

She takes a great shuddering breath, and winds her finger into his hair. It’s getting long, she realises, and something about that thought makes her hold on tighter. Maybe it’ll be easier if she can’t see his face?

(Maybe it’ll be easier with his tears on her skin.)

“Killian - Killian, I - ”

She doesn’t hear the footsteps on the ladder until it’s too late, the door to the loft swinging open and letting in a blaze of sunlight and the broad figure of -

Oh gods. Of her  _ dad _ .

“Hey! Hey we need to get up, we need to - what the  _ hell _ ?”

Emma scrambles desperately at the meagre cover offered by her coat, but it’s far too little too late, David’s mouth opening and closing in mute horror until he spins on his heel.

“It’s morning,” he tells the door. “We need to get a move on, and I don’t mean whatever - whatever  _ moves _ you two have planned.”

“I see sleep hasn’t improved your mood,” says Killian wryly as he disentangles his legs from Emma’s.

“I think the less you speak to me, the better.”

“Alright, alright. David -  _ Dad _ \- can you maybe give us a little privacy? Please?”

“Alright,” David says, much more gently. “I’ll wait in the main barn - but don’t take too long about it. We don’t know how long that spell will keep the king’s men at bay.”

“Believe me,” mutters Killian, “it would take a hell of a lot longer than that.” And winks at Emma’s horrified expression.

“And on that note,” says David in mock joviality. “I’m off to be sick.”

He leaves the loft door open behind him, leaving Emma to hiss her annoyance at Killian in dark whispers as she struggles back into her breeches and ties a piece of baling twine around her unruly hair.

“What are you trying to do?” she asks, grimacing as she flicks a mouse dropping off her shirt. “I thought you liked not being killed?”

“Your father won’t kill me,” Killian says, a little too loudly for Emma’s liking. “I think I’m growing on him.”

“Like a fungus!” comes echoing up the loft stairs, and Killian grins.

“It’s a start!”

\--

David is still scowling when they make their way down to ground level, his fist tight around the pommel of his stolen sword, and his body held tight and alert.

“We can’t stay here,” he says without preamble. “We need a plan to find your mother, and we need it now.”

“I have another contact,” Killian says. “A fairy - ex-fairy, as it happens - but she’s one to have her ear to the ground. The fae may well know something we don’t.”

“Something Blue hasn’t already told you, you mean?” David asks, wrinkling his nose. “Why wouldn’t she have shared any information the fae have?”

“Did she strike you as terribly enthusiastic about this mission from the off, Emma?” Killian asks, and Emma shakes her head.

“He does have a point.”

“Wait.” David steps in between them, although he only addresses Emma. “The Blue Fairy is your godmother, Emma. She’d have told you anything you needed to know, I’m sure of it.”

“I wouldn’t count on that, mate,” scoffs Killian. “You might have done better inviting Maleficent to the Christening”

“Oh, so a member of our inner circle isn’t trustworthy - but  _ your _ source is?”

Killian shrugs, and scratches at his right ear. “I got her out of Neverland, she owes me a favour.”

David raises his eyebrows and folds his arms across his chest.

“Neverland, really?”

Killian mirrors his actions, his chin raised defiantly. “Spent two centuries there. Or thereabouts. I've seen things that would make your hair curl - ” He looks David up and down. “Well, curlier.”

“Done them too, I expect,” sniffs David.

“I've always been good at surviving,” Killian counters, and David’s hand comes up to rub at his neck meaningfully.

“Is that the case?”

Emma groans, pressing her palm to her throbbing temple.

“Killian - David, don't. This isn't helping.”

“Perhaps not,” David says, glaring at Killian. “But it is very interesting.”

“What exactly are you implying, mate?”

“I’m not your  _ mate _ .”

“Okay, okay!” Emma forces herself between them, one hand on David’s bicep and the other held out placatingly towards Killian. “Yes, alright? I get it. Almost getting hanged isn't the best bonding experience, but I need you, okay? I need both of you. Snow White needs you.”

David deflates slightly, his hands twitching at his sides, as the two of them break eye contact to look at the ground.

“So,” Killian says, with a trace of apology in his tone. “The fairy?”

“Actually,” Emma says. “About that. I already found her.”

“Really?” Killian beams at her. “Good job, Swan. How so?”

“Less said about that, the better, I think,” Emma says, nodding meaningfully towards David who frowns. “I had help.”

“From who?” David asks, his eyes narrowed.

Emma scuffs the toe of her boot through the straw, and shrugs apologetically. 

“The king?”

“The one who tried to kill us,” deadpans David.

“But he didn’t,” Emma says swiftly, the sharp pang of fear searing back through her at the reminder. “And it was the queen who helped me save you, and you  _ did _ break the law.”

“I’ll get you a sheriff's medallion,” grouses Killian. “Make it official.”

“Anyway - that’s not - that doesn’t even matter. They just led me to a source who told me where I could find her.”

“Who was that?” asks David, and Emma grins.

“I think you knew him as Grumpy.”

“Oh gods,” David moans, rubbing his hand over his face. “At least tell me the fairy could help?”

“She gave me this.” Emma fishes the vial of dust from between her breasts and holds it up to the light.

“Dirt,” grumbles Killian. “She would.”

“Funnily enough, she spoke rather highly of you,” Emma says archly as Killian winces. “She said magic attracts magic, so all I need to do is… make it do that. Somehow.”

“Okay,” says David. “What are you waiting for?”

“I’m not an expert, you know,” she grumbles as she turns the vial over in her hand. “I need to… hang on.”

She fishes a scrap of paper from her boot before she closes her eyes and tries to imagine the witch they seek. She imagines shelves stocked with spells, a cottage hidden in the woods perhaps, or maybe a cave. She thinks of her mother, of the tattered paper pinned to the wall of Tinkerbell’s workshop, the faded lines of her mother’s jaw, the defiance in her inky glare.

In her hand the vial grows hot, and then, as she opens her eyes, she sees it glowing, bright and golden.

“Worth a shot,” she murmurs, and uncorks it, tipping the contents into the crumpled surface of the paper.

A golden string works its way out of the vial and begins to twist and turn over the creases, the sunlight glittering off it as it forms a bright, sparkling map of the forest ahead, a single spot marked with a great gold X.

“Huh,” she turns to Killian and David with a smile and shrugs. “That was easy.”


	10. The Walls Come Tumbling Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clare's enjoying the snuggles and no sleep that come of having a newborn babe so you're stuck with me (Katie_Dub) posting for her. Show her fic some love to help ease the pain of tending to a smol human.

“Like the good old days, eh Swan?” says Killian as he carves a path through the undergrowth with his cutlass. “I’ve missed this.”

“Which part?” grouses Emma, ducking to avoid the branches that he’s missed, unwilling to let go of his hook long enough to step around them. “The splinters, the mud, the constant smell of wolf piss?”

“Nonsense,” he says, pausing to grin back over his shoulder at her and sending her stumbling against his back. “You and I alone in the great outdoors? It’s romantic.”

“It’s cold,” Emma counters, “and anyway - ” There’s a meaningful cough from behind her, a heavier than necessary tread. “We’re not exactly alone.”

“Are you sure about this, Jones?” grumbles David. “Seems a little ill-travelled to be the route to such an illustrious witch.”

“The more illustrious the witch, the less she tends to advertise her services,” says Killian. “And besides, we can hardly traverse the roads of the realm, mate, or have you forgotten there’s a price on both our heads?”

David winces, and runs a hand over his throat. “Good point. Carry on.”

“I rather intend to, but thank you for your permission, your Majesty.”

Emma scowls, and prods Killian hard in the side.

She doesn’t know all the circumstances of how Killian and Dav - _her father_ \- met, explanations drowned out by frantic kisses and sheer disbelief, but she doesn’t find it hard to tell how they ended up in the hangman’s noose. She’s almost tempted to kill them both herself if they don’t stop _picking_ at each other.

“This is the way the fairy dust wants us to go,” Emma reminds David, keeping her voice as calm and level as she can manage as she gestures to the gold string on the map that they’re following. “If you don’t trust Killian, can you at least trust _that_?”

David looks unconvinced for a moment, but Emma’s expression turns pleading and she can see the moment he relents.

“I think I’d rather the pirate than the dust,” he admits. “But I trust you.”

_You don’t know me_ , she thinks, and stamps down on the bitterness rising in her chest.

“Well, I trust him.”

Killian stiffens slightly, and it stings to know he still doubts that, stings still more to know it’s her own fault. The muscle in David’s jaw works furiously for a moment, and then he nods.

“Very well.”

There’s an awkward moment while the three of them stare at each other that’s broken by Killian letting out a long-suffering sigh.

“Shall we then? I assume her Majesty Queen Snow isn’t likely to come gambolling through the trees at any moment, and there is likely an entire army at our backs, so if we could save the ethics debate for a more suitable time that would be _wonderful_.”

“Oh, like you don’t pontificate,” grumbles Emma before prodding him again, this time a little more good-naturedly. “Come on. I’m hungry.”

\--

She’s practically starving by the time Killian’s sword meets thin air and they’re able to stumble out into a woodland clearing, so much so in fact that she thinks she might be hallucinating the cottage before them. Where the walls should be made of wood, stone, or mud, they’re the smooth golden brown of gingerbread, the sun glinting off windows made not of glass, but of thick, unctuous pieces of brightly coloured boiled sweets, the shutters painted with cinnamon and the doorknob made of candies. Above it all there rises the most magnificent smell of sugar and baking and it makes Emma’s stomach protest loudly.

“Oh, come on,” she mutters. “This is _not_ fair.”

“Not exactly offering a healthy option, is she?” Killian says, keeping his cutlass drawn. “Well, shall we?”

David strides forward, knocking Killian’s cutlass out of the way as he goes, and for the first time Emma sees the king in him. His back is straighter now, his head unbowed as he hammers once, twice, three times on the door.

“Come _iiiiinnnnn_ , sweeties!” calls a high pitched voice from inside. Emma and Killian exchange looks.

“This dwarf seemed reliable, did he?”

“He seemed insane,” admits Emma. “But needs must.”

David huffs, pushes open the door, and without having much choice in the matter, Emma and Killian follow.

\--

The witch herself is not unlike an engraving from a child’s picture book, all stringy hair, long fingernails, and a laugh like steel against steel. She sits in an armchair in front of a roaring stove, the smell of burnt sugar thick in the air, and grins up at the three of them with sweet-blackened teeth.

“And what exactly is it you want from me, sweeties?”

“The dwarf, Grumpy, he said you could help us. That there might be a spell - ”

“A spell? Yes, there are a dozen, no doubt. But why would you need such a thing from me?” Her grin grows wider. “I know who you are, Saviour. Your magic is surely far greater than any of my little party tricks.”

Emma shuffles uncomfortably on the spot. “It’s not that easy,” she mutters. “I don’t - my magic isn’t something I have a lot of - well, experience with. I guess.”

“Magic isn’t about experience,” tuts the witch. “It’s about much more than that.” She leans forward and beckons Emma closer with one long finger. “I can see it,” she says, her voice low. “It surrounds you, sweetie, but you won’t ever be able to control it, not until you admit it to yourself.”

“Admit what?”

“Magic,” she says again in lieu of an answer, “is emotion.”

“Well, that sounds about perfect,” snaps David. “Because I have a very strong feeling about what will happen to you if you don’t help us to find my wife.”

The witch laughs, clapping her hands together in delight. “Oh lovely! I do like a customer who knows what they want. No vagaries! It makes life oh so much easier. But listen.” Her expression drops into a scowl. “Don’t you come complaining to me if it doesn’t work as you wish.”

“Why would it not?” asks Killian.

“Did you not hear me? Magic is emotion. You may wish to find this woman with every fibre of your hearts - but that does not mean she wishes to be found.”

“Of course she wants to be found,” David scoffs. “She’s my wife, Emma’s mother, what possible reason could she have to stay away?”

The witch shrugs, and peels her body out of her chair, brushing her hands on her skirts as she turns towards a large cabinet in the corner of the cottage.

“Suit yourself,” she says, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She opens the cabinet and taps her fingers along a line of mismatched glass bottles, each filled with some sort of thick, unctuous liquid that seems to move away from her touch. Something about them makes the hairs on the back of Emma’s neck stand on end, and she moves surreptitiously back until her shoulders are pressed to Killian’s chest.

“What _are_ those things?”

“Spells, silly,” says the witch, her bony hand hovering over a tall cylindrical bottle full of something that swirls purple and black. “What were you expecting, a magic wand? Yes, yes, this one will do. Come here.”

Emma shuffles half a step forward, then stops.

“Why?”

“Because I need the other ingredient, of course.” She beckons again. “Do you want to find your mother or not?”

Emma lifts her chin, folding her arms as she reaches the witch’s side.

“Alright, now what?”

The witch reaches for her hand, giving her a little nod, and Emma lets her take it.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, this’ll do nicely.”

“What do you - _fuck_!”

Emma tears her hand back, Killian and David rushing to draw their swords behind her, but the witch is grinning happily and there’s a bloom of blood across Emma’s palm.

“Blood seeks blood, sweetie,” she says and Emma clutches her injured hand to her chest. “All I need is a little drop.”

“All you need is a good - ” begins Killian, but Emma cuts him off with a shake of her head.

“You could just have asked.”

“But where would the fun be in that?” she says brightly, and holds out the uncorked bottle. “There you go, not too much now!”

Emma holds her hand over the opening, and lets a small rivulet of blood work its way over the edge. As soon as it touches the liquid, the witch forces the cork back inside and shakes it vigorously, patting Enma’s bloody hand with a slightly grubby cloth as she does so.

“There,” she says finally, holding the vial out to Emma. “All yours.”

“What are we supposed to do with it, exactly?” asks David.

“Open it, fool. Outside though.” The witch shudders. “I don’t want that in my house.”

“How comforting,” says Killian drolly.

“And the price?” asks Emma. “I don’t imagine you’re doing this from the kindness of your heart.”

“For a girl with such magic you’re terribly judgemental,” says the witch, “but yes, I have a price in mind.”

“Well?”

“Well, you can’t pay it sweetie, not at the moment,” she says mildly before turning back to her stove. “But rest assured that when you can, I’ll be there to collect.”

“Wonderful,” Killian mutters. Emma elbows him in the side.

“So that’s it? We just open this thing up and it leads us to Snow White?”

“That’s what you asked for, wasn’t it?” sighs the witch as she carefully lowers herself back into her chair. “So off you go, sweeties. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

\--

They make sure to be far enough away from the witch’s cottage so that they’re safe from any natural form of eavesdropping before passing the little bottle between themselves.

“Do you think it’ll work?” Emma asks, eyeing the swirling contents warily as Killian holds it up to the light.

“Only one way to find out,” David says, reaching up to snatch the bottle from Killian. “I’m done with waiting.”

“David, wait - ” Emma begins, but it’s too late. He’s already popped the cork, and the smoke begins to twist its way out of the neck of the bottle as Killian and Emma take a cautious step back. It’s just as well, the smoke billowing quicker and quicker until David is almost entirely cloaked in a thick, purple mist, all of them coughing into their sleeves as it begins to solidify into a dark, sulphurous mass that hangs inches above their heads like some child’s drawing of a stormcloud.

“Lovely,” mutters Killian. “Creepy magic cloud. Really fills a man with confidence. I think I prefer the fairy way.”

Emma rolls her eyes, but wipes slightly sweaty palms on her breeches nonetheless.

“Maybe you should talk to it?” David says, eyeing it warily, the bottle held tight in white fingers.

“Because that isn’t ridiculous,” Emma grouses, but she can’t deny there’s a sort of anticipation in the way it hovers, the air thick with waiting, the birds silent. “Alright,” she finally concedes, turning her face up to the cloud. “Show us the way to Snow White!”

The cloud vibrates.

“Please?”

It thins, spreads, like wine spilled over a sheet of glass, and a long tendril coalesces to point the way inland where the thickest undergrowth lies, bramble heavy and threatening in their path.

“Delightful,” sighs Killian as all three of them draw their swords. “Shall we?”

“Oh,” says David, his expression grim, his jaw tight. “After me.”

Killian follows him, the two of them slashing and hacking a clear path, small animals running in the face of their ferocity, but Emma hangs back for a moment, her hand stinging as she looks back over her shoulder in the direction of the witch’s home.

_Be careful what you wish for_ , she thinks, the woman’s cackle ringing in her ears. _You might just get it_.

She shivers in the sudden breeze, and turns to follow in their wake.

Behind her, the birds begin to sing.


	11. That Which You Wonder

_\--_

_When she wakes up, it’s dark._

_It isn’t, not really, but it seems it, the grit that fills her eyes has made the world cloudy, strange, figures in the mist that circle around her and always the steady drip, drip, drip of blood._

_“Your Majesty?” whisper the figures. “Queen Snow?”_

_She wants to answer them, her fingers aching with the need to reach out and touch, but she can’t move. Nothing moves but the blood and the swirling grey mists._

_Drip, drip, drip._

_“You need to help her,” cries another voice, louder than the rest. Angry. She thinks she knows it, but the memory is lost in the fog. “Help her!” cries the angry voice._

Yes _, she thinks._ Help her. Help her. Help -

_Emma._

_Who's Emma?_

Snow White wakes with a start, her face damp with tears she can’t remember crying.

\--

They follow the purple smear of the spell until dusk makes it hard to see against the cloud bruised sky, making camp as best they can in a thicket of undergrowth, the trees canopy the best shelter they can find.

Killian watches with trepidation in his eyes as Emma tramps down a spot to rest in, David having gone off with a sword to attempt to procure them some supper.

“Don't lose heart, love,” he says gently as she takes out her frustrations on a bramble. “To find her within a day’s trek would have been lucky beyond measure.”

“Maybe,” huffs Emma, “but I don't know about you, but I feel like we're due some luck.”

“We found your father, did we not?”

Emma turns to him, fists on hips. “And then you both almost died, Killian. I'm not counting it.”

“Are you planning to speak to him?” Killian continues, his voice gentle and his expression cautious. Emma wrinkles her nose.

“I talk to him all the time."

“To ask about tracks or to give the order for food, aye, but as your father?” Killian shakes his head. “I know he's been absent from your life, Swan, but that doesn't mean you have to keep cutting him out.”

“I'm not - ” she begins, but the sound of heavy rustling sets her on guard, silent but for the slow drawing of her sword which she drops with a heavy sigh as David hoves into view. “Oh, it's you.”

“No other fool would come wandering through here,” David grouses as he drops two bloodstained rabbits to the floor. “I hope your skills extend to butchery, pirate, because mine are rather exhausted right now.”

“Actually,” Killian says, stretching slightly, “I thought I would go and find something a little softer than these brambles for our bedding, but your daughter is perfectly capable of a touch of butchery.”

“That’s very subtle,” Emma says. Killian winks.

“I may be gone some time.”

To Emma, it sounds as though he makes twice as much noise as is strictly necessary as he disappears into the woodland, and it makes the silence he leaves behind feel heavier, thicker. Considerably more awkward.

“So,” David says, his voice bright and half an octave too high. “Butchery?"

“Not a skill many crown princesses possess, huh?” Emma mutters as she drowns to sit cross-legged, dragging the rabbits towards her and unsheathing her knife.

“Oh, I don’t know,” David says. “Your mother - ”

“Don’t tell me,” Emma half laughs as she splits the first rabbit neatly down its sternum. “She led a double life as a backstreet butcher.”

“She lived a life more like yours than you might think,” David says gently, coming to sit beside her. “For years, she lived in the woods, relying on the kindness of strangers and her own wits. It wasn’t easy."

Emma thinks briefly of her own life, of the cold of the woods in winter and the things she’s done for firewood. Of the dark, dark nights. Of the things that live in them.

(Of becoming one of them.)

“No,” agrees Emma, jabbing the rabbit a little more firmly than usual. “It wasn’t.”

“We never wanted this for you Emma, never.” She can see him shaking his head out of the corner of her eye. “We wanted you to live the life we didn’t have.”

“And what was that? Royal duties and courtesies?” It’s her turn to shake her head now. “That’s not me.”

“It could have been, though. It should have been.”

“No.” Emma stops, glaring up at him through the strands of hair that have escaped her ponytail. “That life - it’s a dream. Nonsense. All intrigues and… and lies!”

David raises his eyebrows. “You think there’s more honesty in a life on the run with a pirate?”

“I think there’s more honesty in admitting who you are. And Blue’s idea - _your_ idea - of Princess Emma of Misthaven? That’s not me.”

“No,” David says, but he’s smiling. “I don’t suppose it is.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because Princess Emma of Misthaven was a dream, a hope your mother and I held as we watched her belly grow, but now I see my daughter in front of me.” He reaches out and lays his hand on top of her bloodstained one. “I hope to get to know her.”

Emma stares at his hand for a moment. It’s a little wrinkled, liver spots marring its surface, but she can feel the strength in it still, and the child inside her wants nothing more to turn her palm upwards and hold on for dear life.

“All right,” she says, her scowl softening. “We can do that.” And then, louder. “And you can come out of the bushes now, too.”

Killian has the grace to blush as he emerges from his hiding spot, his arms full of moss and dried grass.

“You know, I never remember you being this good a sneak when you were trying to get one over on me back in the day,” Emma says, smiling as David takes a handful of the dry grass and begins to build a fire. “You’ve been practicing.”

“Or maybe I had a vested interest in being caught,” Killian counters, and David groans.

“This really is going to take some getting used to,” he huffs.

Killian smiles as he sits beside Emma, and she turns away from skinning the second rabbit to press a kiss to his bearded cheek.

“Maybe,” she says. “But you better had.”

\--

The weather turns the next day, and it makes the trek more difficult, each step more of a struggle in wet clothes, and with the cold fingers of the wind tugging at their soaked hair. At least the spell is unaffected, constantly slithering its way above their heads and leading them on what begins to feel more and more like a wild goose chase by the hour.

By the time the spell finally pauses to hover above another thicket, vibrating slightly as though considering its next move, Emma has begun to shiver, her teeth chattering miserably,. Killian takes the opportunity to pull her to his side, although the warmth he offers is offset by his own thin, wet clothes and chilled skin.

“How long is this going to go on for?” he asks David, his own voice a little unsteady. “We could be hundreds of miles away - she could be in another realm! Are we to carry on walking forever, just in the hope she’ll be around the next bend?”

“What’s the alternative?” David snaps, looking pretty miserable himself as rain drips from the end of his nose. “We give up? Do you think King Eric will accept us back into his kingdom now?”

Emma winces. “I hope Ariel’s alright.”

“Ariel will be fine,” Killian reassures her before turning again on David. “But we will not be if this continues much longer. Look at Emma, she’s practically blue!”

“I’m fine,” Emma insists, followed by a racking cough that makes Killian lift his eyebrows and David physically deflate.

“Find shelter,” he says. “I’ll follow the spell a couple of hours more. If I can find any signs of civilisation I’ll ask around, see if we can come up with another way.”

“And if you can’t?”

David’s eyes flash in the muted light, his shoulders straightening. “I will.”

Emma wants to argue, wants to demand to follow after him as the spell moves off to the left and he slashes his way after it, but her legs ache and her stomach rumbles and Killian’s grip on her shoulders is firm and comforting and -

“Whoa, whoa!” he cries, hoisting her back up as she droops against him. “No fainting, Swan, this isn’t a romance novel you know.”

“If it is, it’s a pretty shitty one,” Emma grumbles, shaking off her sudden dizziness and planting her feet more solidly in the mud and mulch. “Now what?”

Killian squints up into the treetops. The rain shows little sign of abating and what little of the sky is visible is a dark, miserable steel grey.

“Stamp about, keep moving,” he says, “but don’t go far. I’ve an idea.”

\--

The little shelter isn’t much - Killian’s hands are stiff with cold and the forest isn’t exactly replete with building materials - but the branch walls and intertwined vines of the roof are enough to keep the worst of the rain and wind off as they share the meagre handful of berries Emma had managed to pick during her efforts to keep warm.

“Do you think I’ve made the wrong choice?” she asks after the last berry is gone and the two of them are left to watch the rain.

“About what?”

“This.” She turns to him, her arms wrapped around her middle. “I mean, how many people find out they’re a long lost princess and decide that instead of a life of luxury, they’d rather half drown in the wilds trying to find someone else to do it instead?”

“Heathens,” he says with a grin.

She bumps him with her elbow and sticks her tongue out in reply. “I’m _serious_. What have I done?”

“What we’ve done,” he says, more seriously now, “is what is best both for us and for the kingdom. Not to mention we’ve found your father and given him hope. Doesn’t that count?”

“Isn’t it worse, though? To give him false hope than no hope at all?”

Killian’s brow furrows. “What makes you think this is false hope?”

“Well, you don’t seem convinced we’ll ever find Snow White,” Emma says. “Or if you are, you’ve a funny way of showing it.”

Killian sighs, his head dropping.

“Honestly, Swan, I don’t know. I wish I did. I believe - I do believe that if anyone can do it, you can. But if the worst should happen…” He drops a kiss to the top of her head. “We’ve got each other. _You’ve_ got each other.”

“And that’s enough?”

She can feel his sigh against her hair and the way his beard catches against the drying strands as he smiles.

“Always, Emma. Always.”

\--

Dawn breaks brightly as it so often does after summer rainstorms, and Emma takes the opportunity to clamber out of their makeshift shelter to stretch and turn her face up to the sun.

David has not returned, but somehow that doesn’t worry her as her skin begins to warm, the chills and exhaustion of the day before fading away in the soft light. She sneaks a look back at Killian, his arm thrown over his face as his chest rises and falls, his legs still tucked up from where he’d shuffled in the night to give her room, and she bites her lip, her heart feeling lighter than it has in weeks.

She’s going to tell him. She is. But first, she’d really like not to feel so unutterably gross.

She heads downhill, marking trees with a heavy cross as she goes, and takes advantage of the time alone to just breathe for what feels like the first time in forever, picking berries from low hanging branches and slipping off her boots to bury her toes in the dew soft grass of the occasional clearing.

The birds are singing again out here, the bushes rustling as the creatures of the night scurry home to their burrows, and it fills Emma with a feeling so alien she wonders for a moment what it could be. It's the same feeling she knows from when she's tucked tightly in Killian’s arms, his heartbeat in her ear, the one she'd always thought of as “safe.”

Maybe it's not safe, not really. Maybe, she thinks, pausing to listen for the telltale gurgle of a spring or stream, this is what peace feels like. Or something like it, anyway. As close as the Saviour’s going to get.

She finds a stream eventually, crystal clear and sparkling in the dappled light at the bottom of a steep valley, and wastes no time in shedding her stiff and filthy clothes as she slides down the muddy bank, flinging them into the water before half diving in after them.

She rises, gasping from the cold, to sit cross legged on the riverbed at the shallowest point and scrub her shirt furiously between two rocks. She’s concentrating on a particularly stubborn reddish stain, her brows furrowed, when the sound of splashing from the shallows has her spinning around, shirt held up in front of her.

“You know, my mother was a laundress and I never saw the appeal,” says Killian, smirking as he pads his way through the water towards her.  “Doing it this way seems much less of a chore.”

“I thought _you_ were sleeping,” she accuses, squinting up at him as he comes to stand over her, the sun behind him outlining the strong lines of his legs and catching at the ends of his hair. “Following me now, are you?”

“At the risk of sounding deranged, darling, I’m always following you,” he says, grinning, before his face falls slightly. “I woke alone. I was worried.”

Emma tilts her her head, reaching out to squeeze at the muscle of his calf. “Sorry."

“It’s quite alright, Swan.” He kneels down next to her, the water halfway up his thighs, and reaches to untangle the disaster that is her hair. “We all need a little space sometimes.”

He settles further into the water, working his fingers over her scalp until she leans back against him, the contrast of his warm body and the cool water making her sigh in contentment.

“You don’t talk about your mother much,” she murmurs.

“Not much to say,” he says, gently taking her clothes from her hands and tossing them up until they catch in an overhanging branch, and then shifting backwards until Emma is more or less lying in the water, her hair flowing over his knees. “Can’t say she’s at the forefront of my mind right now, either.”

A hand slips around to cup her breast and Emma laughs, the sound echoing round the valley. “Oh, I bet she isn’t.”

“Can you blame a man for having a one track mind when the track is so…” he slides his hand lower, his fingers in her curls making her breath catch, “tempting?”

Emma closes her eyes, resting her head on his thigh and reaching over her head to press her hands to the muscles of his lower back. The current swirls over her stomach as he taps his fingers against her mound and she stretches languidly letting the water carry her legs apart.

“Well, don’t suffer on my account,” she says, licking her lips as she feels him begin to tease at her folds, her mouth falling open in a silent cry as he spreads her wide and lets the current swirl over her clit.

“Chilly, love?”

She nods, a little frantically, as she buries her heels in the stones of the riverbed and tries to arch herself into his touch. He chuckles, running one calloused fingertip around her clit and pressing her further into the water with the heel of his hand when she whines for more.

“Now who’s the tease?” she grumbles, shifting her hips and tightening her grip on his own. Killian hums, and slides the single fingertip lower, parting her cheeks and making her shiver from more than the cold.

“Complaining?” he asks softly, and she shakes her head.

“Not exactly.”

“I’ve often wondered what it might be like to see you like this,” he says as he returns to more familiar territory, circling her clit and dipping just the tip of a finger into her opening. “Spread for me like a water nymph, with the sun on your breasts and the water surrounding you.” She can feel the shudder that runs through him as he finally touches her properly and she groans in delight. “My two loves,” he murmurs. “So very, very beautiful alone, but together...”

He pulls away, and Emma huffs in protest, but it’s only to unhook her arms from behind his back and hoist her up against his body. His cock is hard and hot against the crease of her backside as he straightens his legs, winding his and hers together until he can part her legs as far as he desires, his teeth sharp against her shoulder as she reaches over and back to tug at his hair.

“I love you,” he says, his voice muffled by the skin of her neck as he presses a finger inside her, his thumb swirling around her clit and making stars burst behind her closed eyelids. “Emma, I love you.”

She wants to reply, means to, yet again the words are just at the tip of her tongue waiting to escape past every panted breath, but as he works her higher, his fingers curling within her, she can’t seem to let them go.

“Killian - Killian - I - ”

“I know,” he croons, “I know.”

“No - no I - “

And then with a single firm press of his thumb, she’s gone, the words lost as she cries out, her body arching out of the water the blue sky dotted with white spots as she finally opens her eyes, Killian breathing hard behind her.

“Wow,” she manages, turning to face him with flushed cheeks and a wide smile, her own hand skating below the waterline. “Your go.”

But Killian shifts away from her, a smile on his own face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m alright, love,” he says, although the rigid length of him across her palm suggests the opposite. “I should sort my laundry, and you should get back to the camp. Your father could be back at any moment.”

“He’ll be alright,” Emma says, scooting closer and turning her face up to kiss him, but again Killian turns away just enough for her lips to fall on his cheek before extricating himself from her embrace to stand and fish her clothing out of the tree.

“You don’t know that,” he says. “Eric’s men are still out there.”

Emma scowls, standing with her arm folded over her chest and feeling suddenly far colder than she did in the water.

“If that’s the case, then what was that little exposition all about?”

“Nothing but you,” he says, scowling slightly himself now.

Emma nods, her jaw set, and strides for the bank, snatching her clothes from his arms on the way.

“Alright, if that’s how you want to be,” she grumbles, dressing roughly in the still damp garments and keeping her back to the river. “I expect I’ll see you soon.”

Killian makes a sound low in his throat that might be a word, but she doesn’t wait to find out what it might be, instead climbing up the bank a little too swiftly for her still pounding heart. She pauses at the top to catch her breath and risks a glance back to where she expects to see Killian watching her leave.

His back is still to her, and it hurts.

\--

David blinks grit out of his eyes and squints up at where the purple cloud has finally drawn to a halt. He’s walked all night, his feet throbbing and his throat parched, only to end up stood at the edge of the hundredth non-descript clearing he’s passed through facing a spell that seems to have run out of… well, whatever it is that spells run on. Magic. Beans. Magic beans. He’s really rather beyond caring.

“Is that it?” he calls up, almost more irritated with himself for speaking to a spell than he is at the cloud itself that hovers balefully overhead even when he picks up a stick and flings it up into it. “Come on!”

Nothing happens.

David growls in frustration and takes two steps into the undergrowth to stand directly beneath the cloud, glaring up into its swirling depths.

“Magic,” he spits. “Useless, dangerous, _stupid_ magic! You’ve taken _everything_ from me - now give - me - my - _wife_!”

The spell just seems to settle more firmly into shape above him, and he lets out a roar, slashing his sword above his head. The weight and force of his attack send him stumbling back, his trousers catching on the brambles as he struggles to regain his balance.

“For fuck’s sa - ”

His left foot lands in a softer patch of earth, and for a moment he thinks he’s managed to get away without falling flat on his back, but then his ankle is grabbed by some unseeable force, and his whole body is lifting, twisting into the air as a net of vines rises up around him until eventually he stops, breathless and alarmed, at eye level with the purple cloud he’s been berating.

“Seriously?” he says, panting.

“Gotcha,” announces a clear voice from below, its satisfaction echoing in his ears just as recognition fills his heart and makes his hands tremble around the vines as he peers out of the gap to better see his captor.

She’s hungry slim, her eyes a little larger than they ought to be in her face and her cheekbones a little sharper, and her hair that had been once raven black is now streaked with steel grey, but her chin is as proud and as regal as he remembers, her hands at her hips just as challenging.

“Snow?”

Her brows furrow, her hands dropping to her sides as she tilts her head up at him.

Above them both the cloud seems to shiver with satisfaction, and then, in a blink, it’s gone.


	12. That Deathless Death

 

Despite the sun reaching its zenith, it’s much cooler in the clearing by the time Killian returns to find Emma fully dressed and waiting for him, her fingers combing through her half-dried hair and her jaw set.

“I’m sorry,” he says without preamble, pausing at the entrance to the little shelter in which she sits, silent and cross-legged.

“For?”

He barely resists the urge to scuff his feet through the fallen leaves, so ashamed does he feel under her steady stare, but he manages to keep his voice just on the right side of the line between contrite and pleading.

“I was… ungentlemanly, back there.”

“Hardly the first time,” Emma scoffs, “and you know I have no issues with you being as ungentlemanly as you like. None. Ever. But seriously Killian, what’s wrong?”

“Your father - ”

Emma flops back onto the ground and groans loudly.

“Please don’t go where I think you’re going.”

“Emma - ”

“No.” She scrambles out of the shelter and to her feet, her hands balled into fists at her hips.”If you’re about to go off on a tangent about how you don’t _deserve_ me or something, I swear I won’t touch you for a month.”

“Well, that sounds unlikely, love,” Killian says, trying for a sly sort of smirk before it drops away, his expression changing against his will into something he’s afraid looks almost like yearning. “I don’t want your parents to be set against us, Swan. I’m in this for the long haul.”

Emma reaches down and wraps her fingers around his own and the blunted end of his wrist, his hook still hanging from the drawstring of his breeches. He can see the struggle behind her eyes as she chews on her lip, the words he’s been longing to hear for what feels like forever trapped behind the last wall that sits between them, and he turns his hand enough to squeeze hers tightly.

“I swear it,” he says, with every ounce of feeling he dares share. “No matter what.”

Emma laughs, slightly tearful, and he inwardly scolds himself for letting his own insecurities affect her so.

“Even if they hate you forever?”

“Nonsense, Swan,” he says, letting go of her hand to brush an errant tear from her cheek. “Who can resist someone as charming as meself, after all?”

“That’s more the pirate I remember,” she says, and leans forward to press her lips softly to his. “Now,” she adds, pulling back as he chases her lips, “about my dad...”

“Now who’s ruining the moment?”

“He’s still not back,” she says as she dodges another kiss, her palms flat against his chest as she tries not to giggle. “I think we should go after him.”

Killian pulls back, worry making his brow furrow.

“That wasn’t the arrangement.”

“No,” Emma insists, “I know, but I was thinking about what you said, about Eric’s men - what if he’s been caught? Or fallen? He’s _old_.”

“Rather ageist of you Swan, but I’ll bite. Will he have left a trail?”

“He will if he knows what’s good for him,” Emma says as she kicks leaves over the scorched earth of their campfire and reaches back to tie her hair back in its leather string. “And if he hasn’t, I’ll find one.” She smiles at him, her eyes flashing bright. “I’m a bandit’s daughter, after all.”

\--

“Snow?”

Her head tilts further, her eyes narrowing as she squints up at him against the sunlight.

“Do I know you?”

“Know me?” All the breath seems to leave his body in a rush, the exhale ending in a choked sort of laugh. “Snow, it’s _me_.”

“Is that some sort of code?”

“No, I - ” he drags in a breath, his lungs stinging in their desperation. “It’s David, Snow. I’m David.”

She steps back, and momentarily he thinks he sees a flash of his wife in the parting of her lips, in the shadows that seem to flee her face even for just a moment, and then she speaks, and even fifteen feet above the ground he crashes painfully to earth.

“I don’t know a David.”

“What do you mean you don’t - we were married, don’t you remember? We were married and we were happy and then - Emma - don’t you - don’t you remember _anything_?”

“Emma,” she says softly, and he leans forward more eagerly making the net swing violently as she looks down at the ground. “I don’t - how do you know that name? How do you know _my_ name?”

“I know - ” He takes another breath, squeezing his eyes shut until he feels he can continue with a semblance of steadiness to his voice. “I know a lot of things, Snow. Maybe, if you let me down?”

She laughs, the harshness of it setting his hair on end so unfamiliar is it coming from the lips of his True Love.

“Do you take me for some sort of idiot?”

“No, I think you’re confused - cursed even - Snow let me down and I can help you, I swear.”

“Help me?” she scoffs. “A madman? Not likely.”

“I can,” he assures her, willing her to believe him even though he knows she can’t see the sincerity on his face from where she stands.

“How?”

He shuffles his weight, casting a glance back in the direction he came and sending up a silent prayer that this works.

“Have you ever heard of a woman they call the Saviour?”

\--

The gentle crosses marked on the trees give way to violent slashes as Emma and Killian follow the path of David’s frustration, their own progress slowing as they’re forced to clamber over the fallen branches he’s left in his wake.

“Not terribly restrained is he, our Dave?”

“Says the man who spent _how_ long plotting to kill an immortal man?”

Killian huffs slightly, but there’s no strength behind it, and when Emma turns around, it’s to see him smiling as he brushes pollen from his hair.

“Love is a strange force, Swan.”

She smiles back, the bruises on her legs throbbing in agreement.

“Makes you do strange things?”

“Makes them worth it, at any rate.”

Emma frowns, her hands on her hips as she turns to face him fully.

“Was it, though? I know - I know I was angry, about the dagger, but now it’s gone - ”

“And so’s he,” Killian reassures her, stepping forward and lifting her chin with finger and thumb. “It wasn’t the revenge I’d imagined, no, but I think in the end, I still won.”

“Because he’s banished?”

“Because I’m happy,” he says, and kisses her gently on the forehead. “All those years in Neverland brought me to you, after all.”

“Alright, alright,” she says, pushing him back so that she can catch her breath, his devotion a little too raw, a little too true, for her to handle even now.

_After_ , she promises herself, promises him in the way she runs her hands down his arms and squeezes. _There’ll be plenty of time after_.

“Let’s go restore some monarchs.”

Killian hums, tapping a finger against his lips, his brow furrowed in mock confusion.

“You know, when you put it like that - is there a reward?”

Emma laughs, slapping at his chest as he wriggles his eyebrows. “You wish.”

“Oh, most ardently, Swan. _Most_ ardently.”

He leans in for another kiss and she laughs, spinning away from him and half skipping down the rail before crooking her finger just to admire the smirk that spreads across his face.

“Better get a move on then.”

\--

“The Saviour’s a myth,” Snow insists as she cuts him free of his vines, her blade a little closer than he’d like as he lies stuck and twisted on the forest floor.

“She already defeated Regina,” David says, struggling to free his right arm and sword in order to help. “She banished her from your kingdom, all the realm is alive with the news of it.”

Snow looks down, purporting to examine a particularly twisted knot, but David spots the downward curl of her mouth, the way her knife stutters, slipping through suddenly nervous fingers.

“Not all the realm, obviously.”

David frees himself from the remains of the net, shuffling backwards slightly as he sits up to try and get a better look at her face. Snow kneels in front of him, dagger still in hand, and looks up far enough to make brief eye contact. Her skin is lined now, spotted darker from what he imagines must have been years spent facing the sun and storms of the forest, and the hair that falls across her face is roughly cut and silvering, but her eyes - her eyes are the same deep green he remembers, the colour of the forest after the rain. The colour of his dreams.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathes out.

Something flashes in her eyes - brighter, clearer - and he sees, just for a moment, the briefest flicker of her mouth - a smile just at the edge of becoming reality.

Then her knife’s at his throat, and the smile is more of a sneer.

“I don’t know who you are,” she hisses, twisting the knife slightly, “and I don’t know where you came from. I don’t know if you think I’m an idiot or if you’re just crazy - and to be honest, I don’t care. I’ll give you one chance. Get up. Go. Don’t come bothering me again.”

She rears back, standing over him with her hands at her hips, still every inch the bandit queen he fell in love with almost a lifetime ago, and he can’t help it - even if it’s the last thing he ever sees he can’t help it - he laughs.

“Oh gods. I missed you. I missed you so much, Snow.”

The lines between her brows deepen again.

“By the gods, you _are_ mad.”

“Funny,” he says, shoulders still shaking with uncalled for mirth, “I don’t think I’ve felt this sane in decades.”

“You - ”

Snow stops, her face contorting strangely and then without warning she drops face first into a heap on the forest floor, David having to scramble out the way of her knife as it skitters free of her fingers.

“What the - ”

“Shit.”

Emma stands in the space Snow had just occupied, a tree branch held tight in both hands as she gapes down at the crumpled form of her own mother.

“I didn’t mean to do that.”

\--

“I fail to see what you _were_ trying to do.”

“She had a knife!”

“Everyone here has a knife, I had the situation in hand - ”

“Oh, is that what that was?”

“Yes! I - ”

“Emma, Emma look…”

Snow blinks her way back into consciousness as Emma and David hover over her, Killian in the background using his sword to poke the embers in the fireplace of the small cottage they’d found nearby.

There’d been something steaming in a pot over the fire, and Emma beckons for him to bring her a mug of whatever-it-is as Snow groans miserably.

“Here,” he mutters lowly as he hands it over. “Hope it’s not poison.”

“Don’t be rude,” Snow mumbles, her eyes still half closed as Emma tilts the vessel towards her lips. “It’s nettle soup.”

“Worse then,” he says, and steps back into the shadows. “I’ll let you two take this part, shall I?”

Snow’s eyes snap open at that and she shoves Emma’s hand away, the thin greenish liquid dribbling down her chin as she tries to scramble up from the bed where they’d lain her.

“You!” she growls, pointing a shaking finger at David. “What did you do to me? I should have killed you when I had the chance!”

“Trust me,” Emma soothes, her hand firm on Snow’s shoulder, “you’ll be glad you didn’t. Specially since the head injury was kind of my fault.”

“Kind of?” Killian asks with a raised brow. Emma shrugs.

“I really didn’t think her stabbing him to death would be in any of our interests, okay?”

“Can you - can _somebody_ please explain what’s going on here? Who are you people, and why are you in my house?”

“The second part was sort of an accident,” Emma admits. “We didn’t know it was yours, and the first part - ”

“I already told her,” David cuts in. “She doesn’t remember.”

“Not this again,” moans Snow. “He’s crazy, you’re violent - ” She looks up at Killian. “Are you the reasonable one here?”

He grins, and waves his hook. “Not something I’ve often been accused of, no. Sorry to disappoint.”

“And he’s _Captain Hook_.” Snow lies back down on the bed and closes her eyes. “I’m dreaming.”

“‘Fraid not, love,” Killian says, not without sympathy. “You should hear them out, you know. Well, Emma, at least. I can’t vouch for Dave.”

“Hey!”

“Wait, wait,” Snow lifts her head and shakes it slowly. “You’re Emma?”

“I am, yeah.” Emma crouches down until she’s at eye level with her mother. “Does that… does that ring a bell?”

“I don’t - ” Snow grimaces. “It doesn’t matter. You need to leave. Now.”

“Just listen, okay?” Emma glances up apologetically at David. “I know we might not have got off to the _best_ start…”

“You knocked me out!”

“For a _reason_. Anyway, please listen. We came from Grumpy - do you remember Grumpy?”

“He’s hard to forget.”

“Right! Exactly right. And he told us, that twenty-eight years ago, his brothers and he… kinda… messed with your memory. A bit.”

Snow gapes.

“Excuse me?”

“Regina - the Evil Queen - she’d attacked your castle. The battle was lost, you thought your husband was dead, you thought your child was - ” Emma pauses, biting her lip. “Gone. They were trying to help.”

“Trying to - ” Snow turns wide eyes on Emma. “And now you’re telling me _he’s_ my husband?” David winces slightly, as Snow stares at him in disbelief. “No offence,” she adds.

“Yeah, he is. I know it sounds wild but - ”

“And you? Who are you?” Snow laughs harshly. “Don’t tell me, you’re my long lost child. You _do_ sort of have my chin.”

“Yeah,” Emma mumbles. “About that.”

“ _You’re_ my child?”

“Look this is pretty weird for me, too, okay?” Emma looks up pleading at Killian. “Help me out here?”

“And who’s Captain Hook to me? Uncle? Cousin? Lover?”

“Now hang on,” begins David, but Killian silences him with a wink in Snow’s direction.

“You can call me son, your Majesty. I won’t complain.”

“You can knock me back out now,” Snow deadpans. “I think I’d prefer it.” She turns to Emma, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Didn’t the Dark One have a nice son you could settle down with instead?”

“Oi,” Killian snaps, but Emma just rolls her eyes, allowing David to take her place at Snow’s side.

He takes both her hands in his as he gazes on her with adoration so clear it makes Emma want to turn away in discomfort.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” he says gently, his thumbs moving over the backs of her hands, “and I can’t imagine how you must feel. I don’t blame you for thinking we’re mad, I don’t, I just - ” He lifts one hand to rest against his cheek, smiling ever so slightly as Snow doesn’t pull away, “Have you been happy here, Snow? Alone?”

The shake of her head is almost imperceptible to Emma and Killian as they watch from the shadows, but it’s enough for David’s face to break into a smile so wide it’s almost blinding, decades falling away from him as he seems to relax in a way they’ve never seen before.

“Then let this mad man try,” he whispers. “You may grow to like him.”

“I sort of doubt that,” Snow says, but there’s something a little more gentle in her tone and she doesn’t push him away, “but if I say no, will you go away?”

“Afraid not,” David says.

“Well then,” Snow pulls her hands away and swings her legs off the side of the bed, “better make yourself useful.”

\--

It seems making himself useful is something David is rather an expert at; Snow’s brief description of the small kitchen garden she keeps enough to send him running for secateurs and wicker baskets not unlike a loyal pet bringing their master their slippers after a long day in the fields.

Snow watches him with an expression halfway between admiration and bemusement, taking the basket he holds out to her with a gently quirked brow.

“Are you always this enthusiastic?”

“Only when it comes to you,” David says with a ridiculously lopsided grin. Snow scoffs, but there’s a smile playing at the corner of her mouth as she opens the door and beckons for David to follow her outside, and Emma and Killian exchange a knowing look.

“I’d better keep an eye out,” Killian says, “I don’t know what kingdom we’re in, and I don’t know if Dave’s likely to drive her to murder before he manages to seduce her.”

Emma grimaces. “Please never use that word in relation to my parents ever, ever again.”

“Very well,” he says, grinning as he drops a kiss to her forehead. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you - I think Dave’s going to try and get his own back for the little show we gave him.”

“Get out,” Emma grumbles, “before you make me sick.”

“I’m the one watching Prince Charming lollop after his True Love,” Killian replies as he heads for the door. “Could get a little nauseating out here, too.”

Emma sticks her tongue out at his retreating back, and turns to survey her mother’s humble home.

There’s not much. The small bed and its straw mattress, a rickety table with two mismatched chairs drawn up beneath it and two rough hewn wooden cups left on top. Emma lifts one to her nose and inhales - it’s tea of some sort, rich and herbal, and still warm beneath her palm - and then coughs, the liquid giving off some other heady scent that makes her eyes sting.

“Ugh,” she mutters. “Not much of a cook, then.”

There’s something about the silence of this place that sets her on edge, makes her look twice at the dark corners, makes her magic shiver down her spine.

It feels cold, even with the embers of the fire still smouldering, even with the bright sun creeping in through the dusty windows.

There are some dried meats hanging from hooks beside the fire, a bow and quiver propped up against a wall, and a couple of long, silky black feathers scattered across the otherwise neat dirt floor, but other than that the place is spartan, empty. Unloved and unlovely, it’s just a place to sleep, not a home.

Perhaps that’s what makes her so uncomfortable; Emma knows a little bit about what that feels like, after all.

There’s a rear door that’s half hanging off its hinges, and out of sheer curiosity, Emma finds herself pushing it just wide enough for her to slip out into the dappled light of an orchard. A water barrel has spilt at some point - perhaps in the storms that had wrecked the Jolly Roger - and the ground is soft and muddy underfoot.

Just at the threshold of the doorway are a perfect pair of footprints. They’re small and narrow, not made by the sort of hobnail boots that most forest dwellers favour, but stranger still they are alone, unencumbered by any matching sets leading toward or away from Snow’s cottage.

“This place is fucking weird.”

\--

Killian’s sword is out, his body held tight and his eyes flickering at every rustle in the trees as David and Snow make their way around her garden filling the wicker basket with a selection of slightly unusual looking vegetables and herbs.

_Not just me, then_ , Emma thinks grimly as she makes her way over to him, keeping her gaze averted from the cold, blank windows of the cottage.

“This place is fucking weird,” she repeats as she sidles up to him and wraps an arm around his waist, his presence immediately soothing her and making her magic calm to a mere hum along her nerves. “I don’t think things are going to be all that easy, no matter how good David’s romance skills might be.”

She nods to where David has just picked a flower and offered it to a discombobulated-looking Snow, and grins when she sees the way Killian’s expression lights up to see her accept it.

“Are you enjoying this?”

“Enjoying what?”

She gestures to her parents.

“The whole… long lost lovers thing.”

“True Love is an incredible thing. I’m not so jaded I can’t admire it from afar, and anyway, you said it yourself, Swan. There’s trouble in the air. I’m merely - ” He shrugs, but his embarrassment at being caught shows in the pink of his ears. “Keeping a lookout.”

She looks up at him, still grinning, and presses a gentle kiss to his jaw.

“Captain Hook, is an old romantic. Who ever would have thought it?”

He looks down, pouting slightly. “You, I would have thought. And a little less of the old while you’re about it, if you don’t mind, love.”

“As long as you’re careful about this look out,” she says. “I’d quite like to see you get a bit older yet.”

Killian grins, and scratches at the remains of the red mark at his throat. “I always am, love.”

Emma hums noncommittally, and rests her head against his shoulder. On the other side of the garden, David hefts the wicker basket onto his shoulder and traipses after Snow as she heads to the next bed.

“Do you think he’ll be able to do it?”

“What, woo her?” Killian shrugs lightly. “She’s a tough nut to crack, that’s for certain, but he clearly has managed it before. And he’s the tenacious sort, your father. Must be where you get it from.”

“I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment,” Emma says with a snort, and Killian chuckles.

“Aye, well. Perhaps he is a mite more romantic.”

“Oh, I’m plenty romantic,” Emma scoffs. “I just - well we haven’t had a lot of time for romance, have we? Just y’know - woodland. Death. Woodland death.”

“And the sex,” adds Killian.

“And the woodland sex,” Emma agrees before looking up at him from under furrowed brows. “Do you really think I’m not romantic?”

Killian pulls her into his side and kisses her firmly on the crown of her head.

“I think you’re exquisite,” he says with pure sincerity, “and I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

“Sap,” she mumbles through her smile, and he laughs into her hair.

“If that’s what you want to call me, love, go ahead.”

“And what would you call yourself then?”

“A man who knows he’s luckier than he ever deserved to be.”

“Don’t say that,” she says, pulling away from him. “Life isn’t about getting what we deserve.”

“Is it not?”

“No! Look at them!” She gestures towards where her parents are bowed low over a line of purple cabbages. “Did they deserve this? They were royalty and now they’re… lost. Just lost.”

“You have to be lost before you can be found, Swan.”

“You really think that?” she turns to him with a frown. “You think we have to be unhappy?”

“No,” he says, “but perhaps - listen. I have lived a very, very long time, and I have faced death more times than I care to count, and worse at that. It might be that maybe - just maybe, mind - for I’m pretty likeable anyway, each of those experiences has changed me - improved me even, though I certainly did not think that at the time.”

“We are the sum of our disasters you mean?” Emma pouts slightly. “That’s depressing.”

“Is it?” Killian tilts her chin up so that he can look her in the eye as he continues. “Regardless, that life, for all its horrors - it brought me to you. I would never, could never, regret that, Emma. Perhaps your parents will feel the same way.”

Emma looks away, “If she ever remembers, maybe.”

“I’ve a lot of faith in your maybes, Swan,” Killian says gently. “Perhaps you should too.”

Snow and David move off from the raised beds, Snow leading again and David half jogging to keep up with her as they move around the cottage. Emma and Killian follow, keeping their distance, but close enough to hear the pride in her voice as she shows off her garden.

“This is my orchard,” she’s saying, gesturing to the blossom strewn trees with her basket as David watches her profile as she half-turns towards the others. “Would you like an apple, Emma?”

“An apple?” Emma smiles, shaking her head. “But it’s only May!”

“Ah,” Snow smiles secretively and taps her finger against her nose, “well, I might just have a trick or two up my sleeve.”

She moves between the trees, her basket swinging at her side. Killian grabs hold of Emma’s elbow before she goes to move after her.

“Something’s definitely off, Swan,” he says lowly, his eyes darting from David and Snow’s retreating figures to the still woodland around them. “Listen.”

Emma nods once, her expression set.

“No birds again.”

“No birds,” Killian agrees. “Careful, aye?"

“Oh,” Emma says, striding after her parents, her hand at her sword. “Always am.”


	13. Heaven Knows

The tree Snow leads them to is short and squat, its gnarled branches heavy with ripe red fruit that Snow plucks with a delighted hum, holding one out under Emma’s nose.

“See? Aren't they beautiful?”

The surface of the apple is so perfect, so mirror smooth and unblemished, that Emma struggles not to physically recoil from it.

“They certainly are… perfect looking,” she manages.

“And the taste!” Snow sighs in apparent delight as she takes a large bite, her eyes fluttering closed as she swallows. When they reopen they’re glazed somehow. Slightly wrong. Her voice half an octave higher as she holds out another to Emma.“Would you like to try one?”

“No, thank you,” Emma manages through gritted teeth, but Killian reaches over her shoulder and moves to take the apple from Snow’s hand.

“Don't mind if I - ouch!”

He pulls his hand back in, rubbing at the red mark Emma's slap has left behind.

“Or on second thoughts, perhaps not.”

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Emma hisses as soon as Snow has shrugged and turned her attention back to her harvest. “Those apples are - are  _ wrong.” _

“That a horticultural judgement or a magical one, Swan?”

Emma shakes her head, folding her arms and wrinkling her nose.

“You don’t think so?”

“Oh no,” Killian concedes, “I’m certain of it. I just wondered how you are.”

“Instinct? I don’t know, I just am. There’s just too much weird stuff going on here.”

Killian runs his fingers down the length of her ponytail and sighs deeply.

“You’re not wrong there, and your mother in the middle of it. I’ve never seen herbs like the ones she’s grown, not in decent society at least, and as for the birds…”

“Blue told me they could sense dark magic,” Emma says, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself as a shiver runs down her spine. 

“Which begs the question,” says Killian. “Who’s using it?”

“I suppose we’d better find out.” Emma heads back towards the cottage, calling back after her shoulder, “But best avoid the apples.”

\--

David is already hanging up bunches of herbs to dry by the time Emma and Killian make their way back into the cottage. He stands on a rickety chair in order to reach the small hooks in the ceiling while Snow passes up the fruits of their harvest.

Something about the domesticity of the little scene sets Emma’s heart clenching painfully in her chest. It becomes easy suddenly, a little too easy, to imagine their faces younger and less careworn, to envisage another smaller cot in the corner and the tabletop strewn with homemade toys.

Then Snow turns on her with a stranger’s eyes and it's like being dunked in ice water, dragging her back to their precarious reality.

“It's not real,” Emma whispers to herself, her eyes stinging. “It was never real.”

“So he's making himself useful, what about you?”

Killian, sensing Emma's discomfort in the way on he can, steps forward and offers Snow a sweeping bow.

“Perhaps I could prepare us supper?” He asks. “No doubt you've many more things you wish to discuss with David and Emma, and I've had enough to practise over the years to make a passable chef.”

“You could have told me that before you employed Granny,” Emma grouses, but Killian is still watching Snow cautiously.

“Alright,” she says eventually, dumping half the contents of the wicker basket in the table. “That's all there is, so set to it.”

“Wonderful,” Killian says, picking up a misshapen vegetable and sniffing it warily. “I shall create a feast fit for royalty.”

“Suck up,” Emma whispers. He winks.

Having safely hung the last of the herbs, David gingerly dismounts from the chair using a rough wooden shelf for support. He leans a little too hard and in an effort to catch himself knocks a small highly polished box to the ground.

“Careful!” Snow hisses, darting forward to scoop up the spilled contents from the floor. “I thought kings might have a bit more delicacy!”

“Actually,” Killian cuts in, “he's a shepherd.”

“And you're a dead man,” David snaps.

Killian holds up hand and hook in protest, his face the picture of innocence.

“Just trying to help, mate.”

“Well, don't.”

Snow ignores their sniping as she works to rearrange the contents of the little box. To Emma, it all looks like worthless tat; a brass button, a scrap of fabric, a broken string of beads, a few well-handled pieces of folded yellowed paper, but Snow lays them each in the box with utmost reverence, her slim fingers drifting over each one once she's satisfied with the arrangement.

“Are they important to you?” Emma asks, softly enough as to not startle Snow out of the trance that seems to have settled upon her.

“I suppose,” Snow sighs. “I hardly remember anymore.” She shakes her head. “That's old age I suppose.”

“Maybe,” Emma says, “but then again, maybe not.”

She spots something glinting on the floor beneath the table and bends to pick it up. 

“Hey, you missed a - oh!”

It's a ring, silver and surprisingly heavy in her hand, set with a crystal of the purest lagoon green. She hears David's intake of breath behind her. 

“Where’d you get this?”

“Oh,” Snow stops, pauses, her brows furrowing. “I don’t recall. Maybe it was a gift.”

“Hell of a gift for a hermit,” Killian says. “No offence.”

“You don’t recall,” David says gently, “because something’s made you forget. I gave you that ring.”

“Looks a little out of your price range, or does shepherding bring in more gold than I thought?”

“It was my mother’s. She said True Love would follow it wherever it went.”

“A pretty tale for a pretty trinket,” Snow says coolly, “nothing more.” But her hand hovers over the box after she drops the ring back in, her lips pressed thinly together. “I suppose you want it back if that's the case?”

“Well, if it means so little to you,” says Emma, pressing for some sort of reaction, but David shakes his head.

“No. Never. It will always be yours, and so will I,” he says.

Snow shakes her head slowly, more sneer than pity in her reaction as she naps the lid of the box closed.

“I was starting to forget how deranged you are.”

David’s clenched hand twitches in frustration.

“Why won't you believe me?”

“Because it's preposterous! Some random man in a trap and it turns out he's my True Love? Life isn't a fairytale!”

Emma risks a glance at Killian to see him smirking slightly.

“Oh, I don't know,” he says brightly, “doesn't sound that preposterous to me.”

“So now Captain Hook believes in True Love, but Snow White doesn't?” David scowls. “What  _ happened  _ to you?”

“Why don't you tell me?” Snow spits. “You're the one who knows  _ so much _ about me after all!”

“Guys!” Emma throws her hands up, pleading. “This isn't helping!”

Snow and David just glare at each other.

“I'm starting to see what that witch meant about being careful what you wish for,” Emma grumbles.

“Shall we eat?” Killian waves the ladle between the two of them, his voice pitched slightly higher than usual. “Much nicer to fight on a full stomach, in my opinion.”

“I still don't know why I haven't run the lot of you through,” mutters Snow, but she drops to sit at the edge of the bed all the same, her arms crossed mulishly. “In fact…”

She stands back up, taking David’s sword from where it had been resting against the wall and holding her hand out towards Emma.

“Hand ‘em over.”

“Excuse you?”

“You might all be insane,” Snow states, “but I’m not. If you think I’m letting any of you eat and sleep in my home whilst armed to the teeth, you need to think again.”

Emma balks, but David is quick to stand and gently remove her sword from her belt, Killian following suit after an exaggerated huff.

“Come on,” David says to Emma. “We need to prove we’re trustworthy.”

“By leaving ourselves to her mercy?” Killian mutters. “How obnoxiously heroic of you.”

“Thank you,” Snow snips, tucking each sword and then Emma’s dagger under the straw of her mattress. “I might let you have them back. But then again…”

She smiles, and there’s something sly and a disturbingly familiar behind it.

“Now, I think I was promised a feast.”

\--

Sleep doesn't come easily for Emma that night, not even with the solid warmth of Killian between he and the cold stone of the cottage wall. Her uneasiness is partly due to Snow’s insistence on using their weaponry as a mattress, and partly thanks to the strange and otherworldly dreams that come every time she dares close her eyes, her certainty when she opens them that she can still hear a baby crying.

Apparently she isn't the only one, though. Although Killian appears to be resting peacefully, going by the steady rise and fall of his chest against her back, David is not, his breathing shallow and a little uneven as he watches Snow sleep from across the other side of the room.

He doesn't speak, and neither does Emma. Part of her wonders if that's because they've run out of things to say, or because saying them out loud might make them true.

_ This was a mistake. _

_ This is hopeless. _

_ This is over. _

Snow chooses that moment to stir, and Emma snaps her eyes shut, afraid to be caught staring. Apparently David wasn't quick enough.

“You know,” Snow says, her voice thick with sleep. “Watching people sleep is not normal behaviour. Do you do this a lot?”

“Can't say I do, no,” David admits, and Snow sighs.

“She must have put up with a lot, this lost princess of yours. What was she like?”

“Sorry?”

“Your princess, or queen, or True Love, whatever you're calling her. Tell me about her.”

“But she is you.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Alright,” David says, swallowing on the exhale. “Firstly, she’s fierce.”

“Fierce?” Snow hums as though pleased. “How so?”

“She never gives up.” David’s breath hiccups slightly as though he's holding back tears. “Not even when faced with hopeless odds.”

“Sounds foolish to me, not fierce.”

“You're wrong,” David insists. “She never lost faith -  _ you _ never lost faith, Snow.”

“I've nothing to believe in,” says Snow bitterly. “Never have.”

“That's not true,” David says gently, “you've always had us.”

“Don't start,” Snow scoffs, but David continues regardless.

“Our love has always been in your heart, Snow, and I believe, I  _ have _ to believe that if you just look deep enough, you'll find your hope again.”

It goes quiet for a moment, before, barely above a whisper, Emma hears Snow say, “I’d like that.”

“Yeah,” says David, the smile clear in his voice, “I would, too.”

 

\--

 

Eventually they fall asleep, and Emma manages to join them briefly, but their heavy breaths remind her too much of a storm in the treetops, and her heart still startles her back into consciousness with sobbing ringing through her ears and terror in her veins.

So she gives up.

There’s little to interest her in the cottage, but she cautiously rises from her position on the floor regardless, wary of waking Killian who still bears the dark circles of his near death experience under his eyes, and settles herself at the table.

The box of Snow’s treasures is still where she left it, and curiosity leads Emma to open the lid and take a closer look at the things inside.

Somehow they look even smaller in the grey dark, lesser, a box full of dust where once there were memories, and she moves to snap it back shut, feeling uncomfortably like she's intruding into a corner of Snow’s existence she cannot fully comprehend, but then she pauses. Looks harder. Where's the ring?

It's no longer nestled in the safety of the box at any rate, and Emma casts a frantic look under the table in fear that she's somehow knocked it underneath again. There's nothing there though, nothing, that is, but another of the long, shiny dark feathers she'd noticed before.

“Weird,” she mutters to herself, sitting up and shaking off the unexplained shiver that runs down her spine. “Creepy weird.”

She pushes the box to the centre of the table and folds her hands in front of her, wishing, suddenly for any light that wasn't filtered through the skeletal boughs of the trees, for companionship other than the blank, staring windows of the cottage and the sound of breathing.

“Get a fucking grip, Emma,” she mutters to herself. “Since when were you scared of the dark?”

The back door creaks on its rusted hinges and she almost falls off her chair, her heart thundering.

“Enough!” she tells herself sharply through gritted teeth. “I need some air.”

She closes the door as gently as she can behind her, sparing a last guilty glance at Killian. He’s unlikely to be delighted about her decision to take a nighttime stroll, but she can’t wake him, not when he’s so in need of a restful night.

Not that she isn’t. She stretches, groaning as her joints creak miserably in response, and thinks longingly of the soft mattress back in the castle.

“You’ve been getting spoiled,” she mumbles, working a crick out of her neck. “Getting used to the finer things in life.”

A warm bath wouldn’t go amiss, either. Clean socks.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be the  _ worst  _ thing in the world if Snow never remembered?

“And that’s enough of that,” she mutters, scrubbing the back of her hand over her eyes before moving to scuff at the dirt with her foot. She can’t think of why or how her mother’s ring could have ended up out here, but since she’s here anyway...

“Why, Saviour, looking for this?”

For a brief moment Emma almost believes she's dreaming, so unexpected is the apparition before her, ring in hand. But Regina smiles, her teeth as white and as brutal as a crocodile’s, and Emma's magic flares into life.

Not a dream, it tells her. A nightmare.

“You.”

“You were expecting someone else?” Regina tuts lightly. “I expected better from you, Saviour.”

“Better than what?” Emma grits out. “I've reclaimed my birthright, found my parents. You have nothing over me, Regina. You lost.”

She laughs, prowling the edge of the clearing, her cape sweeping through the leaves.

“Did you, though? A birthright you loathe and parents who don't even know you?” Regina smirks. “Pathetic.”

“Swan?”

Emma forces herself not to groan out loud, her magic sparking in warning at the sound of Killian's cautious approach.

“What's going on?”

“Isn't it obvious?” Regina says gleefully. “I've set a little trap for your precious  _ Swan _ , and like the predictable little peasant she is, she's walked right into it.” She pauses, looking Killian up and down. “Shame about the leather, pirate, but I don't object to the more  _ vulnerable  _ look.”

“Don't,” Emma growls, lighting coursing over her clenched fists. “Don't you talk about him like that. Don't even  _ look _ at him.”

“Emma - ”

“Now, now,” taunts Regina, “no need for jealousy.” She leans forward, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “I'll even let you watch.”

There's no conscious thought behind what happens next, just fire that licks through her veins and fury that flows forth in a wild shriek as Regina is thrown bodily across the clearing to land, battered but grinning against the cottage wall.

“Now  _ that's  _ more like it.” She heaves herself to her feet, her palm glowing red, flames licking at her fingertips as she sneers in delight. “Time to finish this.”

Emma ducks the first fireball, throwing herself across the clearing to take shelter behind the nearest tree.

It doesn’t look good.

Killian is beside her behind a trunk of his own, but he’s unarmed and so is she, and the Evil Queen stands between them and any hope of reclaiming their swords. Stands between them and her sleeping, vulnerable parents.

“Fuck,” she pants out as Regina laughs. “ _ Fuck _ .”

“Oh, little Saviour!” Regina calls, “Come out come out wherever you are! Or shall I hunt you out like the gutter rat you are?”

The leaves above Emma’s head tremble and singe as another fireball flies past.

“ _ Fuck. _ ”

“You can do it,” Killian hisses, his own shelter smoking lightly, “Emma, you can do it.”

She looks down at her hands, clenching them tightly.

“I don’t - ”

“Yes,  _ Emma _ !” Regina sing-songs, “Come show me your little party tricks!”

“What’s the alternative?” Killian ducks low as another fireball makes a direct hit. “Her heart?”

“Gone - ”

“Then it’s now or never, love.”

He’s right. He normally is.

Emma relaxes her hands, rolls her shoulders back. “Stay. There.”

Dawn crests over the roof of the cottage as she steps out into the clearing, casting Regina’s dark figure in stark relief against the pale pink of the sky and the golden warmth of the stonework. Emma swallows hard, her mouth already dry, her heart pounding.

Regina smiles.

“It was never about the kingdom, Emma,” she says. “It was about this.”

“And what is this, exactly?”

Her smile spreads wider.

“I once told your parents I would destroy their happiness if it was the last thing I did. And now, I will.”

Emma doesn’t have time to think before her feet are leaving the ground, an invisible hand tight around her throat, her vision sparking.

“Pathetic,” Regina spits, and unclenches her fist sending Emma face first into the earth below, dropping Snow’s ring as she does so. “Just like your mother.” 

Emma spits dirt from her mouth, struggling up onto her elbows before being forced back down by a sharp heel between her shoulderblades.

“Is this the best you can do?” Regina coos as Emma struggles for breath. “The mighty Saviour?”

She laughs, sharp and vicious. 

“Come out, Captain, I hear you like to watch them die.” Another snigger. “Perhaps I’ll tell her father it was you.”

The ring glints in the breaking light. Emma sets her teeth, presses her palms into the ground, closes her eyes, and pushes.

The magic is like cold fire, setting her alight as her body arcs through the air. A shockwave of bright white light sends Regina flying against the cottage door, the wood splintering at the impact.

“Bitch,” Regina shrieks, wiping a smear of blood from her mouth. “You’ll regret that.”

“Bet I won’t,” Emma snaps back, holding her hands out in front of her and letting the power strengthen her shaking knees. 

Regina’s next blast of magic is met by a wall of light, bouncing off to dissipate into the air as Emma settles herself more firmly into position. The Evil Queen’s momentary shock gives her enough of an opening to push a little harder, her face screwed up with the effort as she once again sends Regina tumbling.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Snow is at the door, her bow drawn tight, David at her shoulder, as Regina struggles to rise to her feet, her ankle giving way beneath her.

“Get back!” Emma shouts, one hand flying out towards her parents. “She’s dangerous!”

“Oh, my dear,” Regina says, but there’s not laughter in her voice now, only malice and bitterness flowing through every word. “You have no idea.”

“No,” Snow says, bitter sharp as she shakes her head, “no she’s - she’s not - she’s sorry!”

“Sorry!” Emma shrieks, “Does she  _ look _ sorry?”

Regina hums delightedly as Snow’s wide eyes flick between the two of them.

“She’s… helped me?” Snow says, lower, slower, doubt lowering her bow ever so slightly as her brow furrows.

Emma breathes harshly through her nose, struggling to keep her hands steady as she keeps them aimed squarely at Regina’s chest.

“How?”

“The food!” Snow says, almost pleading. “The… the apples… I…”

“I’ve made it up to her,” Regina says, smiling brutishly, “Been the stepmother I should have been, isn't that right, dear?”

“You’ve been drugging her,” David says, his hand hovering above Snow’s shoulder. “I should have known.”

“Well now, that’s quite the accusation,” Regina says, “Perhaps we should see what the lady of the hour thinks, hmm? Snow? Who do you believe? Me? Or these  _ strangers _ ?”

Emma can see the way Snow swallows, see the tremble in her bowstring.

Regina’s lip curls.

“Choose.”

There’s a sharp, wet sort of sound and then Regina disappears in a cloud of purple smoke.

The last Emma sees of her is her crocodile’s sneer, and she chokes out a little laugh. But her laugh tastes strange. Hot. She tries to take a step forward, towards where Killian has emerged from the treeline, but her legs won’t co-operate.

“Huh,” she mutters, and looks down. “That’s new.”

There’s an arrow lodged just under her rib cage, surrounded by a spreading, inky stain.

The feathers of the flight quiver as her breath starts to come in sharp, painful gasps, her hands trembling as she tries to get a grip on the blood-slick shaft half buried in her belly, tries to will her magic out through her stuttering fingertips.

It flares, white and warm, before fizzling to nothing against her damaged flesh.

“Emma?”

She looks up, her mouth hanging open, to see Killian ashen faced before her, his hand hovering over hers, and behind him, Snow White, her bow still held high, her body frozen, her eyes wide.

Emma whimpers, and falls to her knees.

David is shouting - she thinks it’s David - his voice high and hysterical, Snow’s answers less frantic but no less frightened, her tongue tripping over the words as Emma collapses onto her side, crying out as the arrow jolts within her.

“Snow! What did you do?  _ What did you do _ ?”

“Regina’s my family! She warned me - she told me about witches like you! That you’d try and trick me!”

“We’re your family -  _ we  _ are!”

“No! No!”

“Mom?” The word is unfamiliar, bubbling out on a gurgled exhale, but it stops their argument in its tracks. ”Dad?”

A heavy weight falls beside her, something large and warm that shakes as it presses up against her but she can’t turn, can’t move, only rip agonising breaths from tortured lungs as Killian’s face fills her line of sight.

“Emma, Emma, shhh,” he attempts to soothe her as he presses his hand against her wound and an ungodly wail fills the air. “It’s going to be okay, you’re going to be okay.”

He has blood in his beard, she realises when she can open her eyes again. Wet and warm and bright against his pale skin. How strange.

Gods, but she hurts. Why does she hurt? She feels Killian gently unpeel her fingers from the arrow’s shaft. Oh yeah. That.

“You can fix this,” he says, insists, his jaw tight.

“I can?” She mumbles, fingers scrabbling for a grip on his shirt.  “Killian, I don't think I can. I don't think - ”

He shakes his head. Sharp. Furious. And smiles a little smile that barely touches his cheeks.

It’s a lying smile, she realises.

She’s watching him lie to her, and it’s only now she truly understands what it costs him to do so. What it’s costing both of them.

_ Forever. She wanted forever. _

“It’s cursed,” she hears, Snow’s voice small and scared and a million miles away. “The arrow - Regina said - she swore - ”

Emma goes to tell her it’s alright - that she couldn’t have known, not really, but the effort makes her cough and there’s more blood in Killian’s beard now, speckled across his cheeks like macabre freckles.

“Shhh okay, just shhh,” he says, a little desperate. “Save your breath, darling. Look at me. Just keep looking at me.”

She can’t, but then she can’t not. Her body won’t move, her vision blurring only to come back sharper, clearer than she can ever remember.

She can hear the birds in the trees.

“I'm sorry,” she gasps out, another red-pink splatter on his cheek following the words.

“None of that now, none of it, everything's going to be fine, everything's going to be just fine.”

“I never told you,” she manages, suddenly gripped with a fear worse than the pain in her abdomen, worse than the certainty of approaching death. “I never, I never - ” 

“It can wait,” Killian says, a little too sharply, his hand coming up to grip her chin.

“No. No. I - ”

He sobs, tears tracking through the marks left by her lifeblood on his cheeks.

“Emma, don't, please don't,” he pleads, but how can she not? How can it not be the last thing she’ll ever do?

“I love you,” she says, and it feels like peace.

The world is fuzzy at the edges now, darker, everything redundant. Pointless. Nothing but Killian's face, hovering above her all pink and red and wet. Why's it wet? Is it raining?

Her throat hurts. Her chest hurts.

Killian's crying. How silly, didn't he hear her? She'd say it again but the breath won't come, just a wheeze on the exhale, copper bitter on her tongue.

“Don't be sad.”

“I love you,” he says, babbles, the words almost unrecognisable. “I love you so much. It's going to be okay, it's going to be okay.”

_ Okay _ , she thinks.  _ Okay. _

One last effort.

“Promise. Promise you won't - ” her breath rattles. “Do anything stupid.”

“Me?” he laughs, a tragic, humourless little thing. “Never.”

Everything goes dark, fading until the only point of light is Killian's eyes, wide and pleading, and then -

His lips touch hers, the softest of brushes, and the world explodes in a flash of rainbow light.

It tingles over her lips, along her useless limbs, only to settle warm and heavy over her like the softest of blankets. A mother’s embrace.

Her magic swells in a final crescendo, and she feels more than sees the way it bursts from her hands, her elbows, her hips, swallowing them all in a tsunami of light.

She takes a deep breath.

And another.

“E - Emma?”

She bolts upright, hands clutching at her belly, but there's nothing there, no arrow, no wound, just the dark stain of blood on her shirt to prove she hasn't dreamt it.

“What the - ”

“Emma?”

Her head snaps up. Killian and David are by her side, their hands at her elbows, but by their gaping expressions they've been shocked into silence. No, it's Snow. Snow who's dropped her bow, her eyes wide and swimming with unshed tears.

“I could have killed you,” she whispers, grief-stricken. 

“I thought you did,” Emma says. “What the hell  _ was  _ that?”

“True Love’s Kiss,” David murmurs in astonishment. “It can break any curse.”

“The arrows were cursed,” Snow half-sobs. “They were cursed and you broke it.”

“And your magic, your magic did the rest,” David says, his lips cracking as he smiles. “You  _ are  _ the Saviour, after all.”

“I thought that was a legend,” sniffs Snow, but Emma has already turned to look at Killian, at his pallid, blood soaked face, at his smile brighter than any she's ever seen.

“Fuck no.”

She kisses him again, a clash of lips and teeth, hands clawing at each other's shoulders as relief burns higher than lust, semi-hysterical laughter slipping out as they pull apart only to press back in, each of them loath to let go for even a moment.

“Don't do that again,” Killian whispers against her lips. “I'm too old for it.”

“Not my idea of fun either,” Emma mutters.

“Emma,” Snow breaks in again, stumbling to the ground, her hands tight around Emma's ankles. “Emma, True Love’s Kiss, it breaks  _ any  _ curse.”

Emma hears David's intake of breath, sees the light shining in her mother's eyes as she half sobs:

“I  _ remember. _ ”


	14. Every Little Fool

Snow White, as Emma had suspected she would be, is a consummate queen. She cuts a regal figure even in her peasant’s rags as she marches through the gates of Eric's castle to thunderous applause, Ariel’s squeals of joy only brightening her husband's delighted smile.

King Eric not only offers them a ship and safe passage, but also is happy to offer David pardon on bended knee while Snow watches beatifically from the sidelines, hastily adorned in one of Ariel’s crowns. He is even willing to offer Killian a swift handshake and a gruff “Don't come back” that seems to mean as much to the pirate as any proffered jewel.

_Almost as much, Swan. Gold’s gold, after all._

Snow White also cries though. A lot.

It was only to be expected, Emma supposes, immediately after the curse had broken. Snow had been understandably overwhelmed by shock, grief, horror, and the sweetest of relief. So Emma had borne it with good grace when Snow had thrown her arms around her neck and wept into her hair. She’d smiled as she'd led Killian away as her parents reconciled, even had to bite back her laughter when Snow had latched her attentions and her tears onto a thoroughly horrified looking Killian, who'd spent a good half an hour patting the rightful Queen of Misthaven’s back while Emma had wrung out her filthy shirt in the water barrel outside.

By the time they’ve returned home, though, and certainly after the weeks that pass as Queen Snow and King David reclaim their kingdom, Emma begins to concede that the tears are getting tiresome.

“You will be careful won't you?” Snow asks for the fifth time, dabbing at her cheeks with a fine linen handkerchief. “We don't know what Regina could be planning next.”

“She can plot all she likes,” Emma scoffs, “I'm not worrying about her. Not today.”

“And what about storms? And mermaids? And - ”

“We've weathered them all before, Mom, I promise you.”

Emma wraps her arms around both of them, and buries her face in the collar of her father's fur lined cloak.

She’s spent almost all her life with no one to worry about but herself, and it’s overwhelming, sometimes, to be faced with the knowledge that she has people now. People who love her. People she can lose. Killian had offered to delay the trip, offered to forget it all together if she’d rather have remained at the castle with her parents, but she’d seen the light in his eyes when she’d suggested it.

(“ _For how long?_ ”

“ _For as long as you want_.”)

Plus, although she’s learning to love her parents, learning to appreciate their gentle words and protective instincts, there’s something to be said for escaping their smothering now and then.

“You be careful, okay? I've had much better luck with curses than either of you.”

“It's not the curses I'm worried about,” grumbles her father as he glares over her shoulder towards the dock.

Emma laughs, pulling back to wriggle her fingers and allow the setting midsummer sun to send rainbows skimming across the surface of her new ring.

“It's all perfectly proper, Dad,” she says, grinning. David looks unconvinced.

“There's nothing remotely proper about that man, Emma.”

“I know,” she says, biting her lip. “That's why I like him.”

David closes his eyes and shudders lightly.

“I don't want to think about it.”

“You sound like Blue. Is this because he beat you at cards again?”

“He cheated!”

Emma sighs, kissing her father on the cheek and then rocking back on her heels.

“Alright, alright. If it helps at all, I'm pretty sure he's too busy with his other woman to bother with me.”

The three of them turn to watch the proceeds at the dock. Killian is dressed, at Snow’s insistence, in the sort of princely garb he would have set alight were Blue to have suggested it, but he’s still clearly a man in his element as he stands at the bottom of the gangplank apparently interrogating every man who steps aboard his newest beloved. The words _The Lady Swan_ are visible above his head in smart black cursive on forget-me-not blue.

“Does he have some sort of problem with the crew?” Snow asks, her brow furrowing, “Ariel insists they are the best men they can spare and I don’t think she’d risk - ”

“Don’t worry,” Emma assures her. “I trust Ariel entirely. Killian on the other hand…” She smiles as he whips a flask out of one man’s hand and throws it overboard. “I don’t think he’ll ever trust her to anyone but himself.”

“I’m not sure it’s the ship he’s worried about,” says Snow knowingly, giving Emma a gentle push. “Off with you then, before your father changes his mind about the blessing.”

“Bit late for that,” David mutters, “unfortunately.”

“Alright, alright.” She throws her parents one last smile, the sky glowing red behind them as the sun touches the horizon. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

“Do you mean that?” asks Snow. “Or are you just trying to get rid of us?”

“Hardly,” Emma says, and it still astounds her how much she’s come to mean it. “You were hard enough to find in the first place.”

Snow smiles.

“Then go.”

She doesn’t need telling again, jogging up to the gangplank as quickly as her rather voluminous cloak will allow.

“Emma.” Killian turns to her with relief, his hair standing slightly on end from the number of times he’s run his hand through it. “Thank god. We need to set sail before I change my mind, these men are - oi! You!” he gestures furiously towards a young man carrying a coil of rope. “Put that back! You don’t bloody - not _there_ , you idiot!”

Emma stands on her tiptoes to drop a kiss to the corner of his lips.

“I’m so glad you’re taking this whole relinquishing command thing in your stride.”

“I’m just not certain this isn’t some sort of truly convoluted revenge plan of Eric’s,” Killian grumbles. “Sending me a crew so incompetent I daren’t relax for even a moment - Hey! You! You with the chest! That’s bad form, that is, put it back where you found it!” He looks down beseechingly at Emma who’s struggling to contain her grin. “They keep _touching_ things.”

“It’s their job,” she says, resting her palms flat against his chest. “You’re not captain on this voyage, remember?”

“Believe me, it’s painfully hard to forget.”

Emma slides her hands a little lower and tilts her head.

“Well, maybe I could help with that. That is, if we ever get out of the harbour.”

“Very good point, love,” Killian says, still frazzled, but, she hopes at least, for a slightly different reason. “Tick tock.”

He rather gallantly holds out his arm for her to take, which she does whilst pretending not to see the grin he sends over her shoulder to her watching father, and leads her aboard the newest flagship of Misthaven’s navy.

(It might also be the only ship in Misthaven’s navy, but it hardly matters. Who’s counting after all?)

He stops as they reach the deck, bowing low over her hand and then dropping a kiss to it before he rises.

“Welcome aboard, your Highness. Here’s to a better trip than the last, aye?”

“Sounds good to me,” Emma says, nodding to the vessel’s actual captain as he doffs his hat to her. “I think I’ve had enough adventure for a lifetime.”

“Now that,” Killian says with a twinkle in his eye, “is almost certainly a lie.”

“You think?” Emma asks, raising her brow. Killian grins.

“So, there’s no way in which I can… tempt you?” He leans closer and whispers in her ear. “I promise warm sands and incredible sights. And privacy. Lots of privacy.”

“Hmm,” Emma taps her chin. “How much privacy are we talking here? No fairies?”

“No fairies, no dwarves, no disapproving fathers,” he agrees, wriggling his eyebrows. “No clothes.”

“Well,” she says, sliding her hands up his chest and leaning into him. “When you put it like that…”

“Weigh anchor!” bellows the captain, and the Lady Swan rocks beneath them, Emma flinging her arms around Killian’s neck in order to keep her balance.

“I am _never_ getting used to that.”

Killian laughs, clear and joyous, and drops a kiss to the top of her head.

“I’ll make a pirate of you yet, Swan. Only fair, since you’ve made me a prince.”

“Yeah, in name maybe,” she says, grinning, as he leads her over to the bow of the ship. “But I reckon there’s a little pirate left in you yet.”

“How dare you?” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around her as they two of them look out towards the purpling horizon. “I’m a gentleman.”

Emma hums, taking hold of his hand and sliding it between the edges of her cloak where she’s naked beneath, taking pride in the way his eyes widen.

“What a shame,” she mutters. “Cause I might have need of a pirate tonight.”

His fingers flex against the bare skin of her belly once, twice, and then he breathes out heavily, his thumb stroking gently just below her belly button.

“You will be the death of me, won’t you.”

Emma hums noncommittally as she encourages his hand higher, only stopping when his fingers brush the curve of her breast and she can feel his intake of breath.

“You did promise privacy.”

“Not _here_ ,” he mutters, and she grins to hear the scandalised note in his tone. “These are your father’s men!”

“And I’m their crown princess,” Emma counters. “What are they going to do about it?”

“ _Emma_!”

“What?”

He groans, pressing his lower body against hers and dropping his chin to her shoulder.

“Five minutes, please, that’s all I ask and then I swear...”

“Swear what - Oh! Wow!”

The darkening sky lights up in a thousand sparks of colour, red, blue, gold falling around the bows of the ship in showers of light as Emma leans forward against the bow rail.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispers, “did you do this?”

Killian just brushes a lock of hair behind her ear, his voice a little raspy as he agrees.

“Beautiful.”

\--

Snow and David remain on the dockside to watch the fireworks reflecting off the ship’s wake.

“I’m still not sure this isn’t a horrible idea,” mutters David as Snow presses herself into his side to avoid the cool dusk breeze. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Then they’ll deal with it, David,” Snow says. “They’ve got each other, they’ll be okay.”

David sighs.

“If you say so. You seem very relaxed about all this - we only _just_ got her back.”

“And I only _just_ got you back too,” Snow says slyly, “or did you forget?”

“Well there are a few advantages to a bit of privacy around the place,” David concedes, “although giving the pirate nightmares _was_ rather enjoyable.”

Snow laughs, and burrows further into the warmth of his cloak.

“I know I should be sad, watching her sail away, but I can’t be. Not really, not now. Do you know why?”

David looks down at her as she turns her face up to his, her smile as soft and as gentle as any he’d seen on her in the time before, its brightness the sweetest promise of happiness she could have offered him.

“She called me _mom_.”

\--

The sailors avert their eyes as the last of the sparks settles into the ocean and the Crown Princess of Misthaven leads her lover below decks by the curve of his hook. Not that Emma cares, she has more important things on her mind. The bloody cloak for one.

She’s halfway through shrugging it off at the bottom of the ladder, fiddling with the small silver clasps that had to work to protect her modesty back on shore, when Killian clears his throat behind her.

“Not that your eagerness isn’t a delight,” he says, a touch awkwardly, “and not that I want to appear ungrateful for the surprise, but first - what do you think?”

“About what?” she asks, and looks up.

The Lady Swan isn’t much larger than the late Jolly Roger, so she’s been expecting similarly tight quarters, but clearly Killian, or whoever he’s convinced to arrange the stateroom in his absence, had had other ideas.

There’s still a desk, ink pot and quill at the ready and several rolls of parchment tucked neatly into cubby holes beside it, and a large, leaded window that casts the last rays of sunset across the cabin’s polished wood floor, but it’s far larger than the Jolly Roger’s accommodations, brighter and warmer somehow too, as though the terrible events of the Roger’s life had lingered in her boards and walls whereas here is washed clean, renewed. Ready for a new adventure.

Emma takes a deep breath, and feels much the same.

All around them are reminders of the place that they now call home. Misthaven’s standard is painted on one wall, the gold and cream filigree around the window echoing its curves and warmth. There’s a small portrait of her parents on a nightstand, a full length mirror at one wall, the barrel of honeyed mead Granny had gifted them tucked in the corner beside it and weighted with sandbags for safety.

And in the centre of it all, lit by red-gold sunlight and covered in sheets of fine white silk, is an absolutely enormous bed.

“I hope you like it,” Killian says. “It was a real bastard to get in.”

“You really went all out, huh?”

“Well,” Killian says, slipping from behind her to stand before her, his hand on hers where they’ve frozen on the clasps of her cloak. “It isn’t everyday an old pirate like me gets to bed a beautiful princess, is it?”

“It kind of is, actually,” Emma says, smiling as she moves her hands to rest on his hips and allows him to work the fastenings free. “What did you think we’ve been doing so far? Because I promise you we weren’t playing cribbage.”

“Ah,” he says, dropping a kiss to the exposed flesh of her throat as the first clasp comes undone. “But this is different.”

“Is it?”

“It is.”

He pulls back, smiling broadly, and she sees in him the same light, the same joy she’s seen that first evening on the Jolly Roger so many months ago. A man at peace. A man at home.

“Happy honeymoon,” he murmurs.

“Happy honeymoon.”

She shrieks with laughter as he pushes her back onto the bed, her cloak falling open around her as she wriggles up onto her elbows and grins up at him.

“Well?” she asks, crossing her bare legs at the ankles, “what do you think?”

Killian groans, dropping to his knees at the end of the bed, and, sliding off the silk slipper she wears, presses a kiss to the arch of her foot.

Emma snorts with laughter and jerks away reflexively before raising her other leg enough to kick the second slipper free.

“Alright there, Swan?” asks Killian, grinning as she settles back down. “Ticklish?”

“If I say yes, will you ever let me live it down?”

He tilts his head as though considering, and his grin turns sly.

“I think I could turn it to my advantage.”

“And I think I could kick you right in your pretty face,” says Emma. “Maybe let’s not test it tonight.”

“No,” agrees Killian, his expression softening. “Not tonight.”

He rises to his feet, the intensity with with he looks at her making her feel strangely self-conscious, her teeth biting into her lip as she keeps her knees together.

“What?”

“I can’t believe,” he says, and she’s astounded to hear his voice crack. “That I’m your husband. That I - that you - ”

“That nothing,” she says softly, sitting up to rest her palm against his rough cheek. “I love you.”

“Aye,” he says, and smiles, a small, quiet little thing. “That you do. And I, you.”

“So enough of that, okay?” she says as she works the buttons loose on his shirt. “Enough of worrying and doubting and _protocol_ and all that shit. You and me, okay? That’s all that matters. As long as we have each other, we’ll be just fine.”

Killian sighs, a long, satisfied sort of sound.

“Sounds perfect to me, love.”

He drops his forehead to rest against hers as she pulls his shirt free of his breeches, his breath coming in gentle puffs until she’s worked the fabric over his shoulders and onto the floor to be followed by the solid thunk of his hook and brace. Only then does he move to kiss her, his mouth warm and insistent over hers as he leans over her, the two of them falling together into the comfort of the feather bed, and all Emma can think is _perfect._

_Finally, everything is perfect._

\--

_So the lost princess has married her pirate prince, and is no longer lost. The girl whom nobody wanted has became the darling of a nation, the boy whom nobody cared for knows what it was to be beloved. The frightened are now fearless, the lonely safe in the bosom of family._

_The kingdom rejoices as the queen regains her throne, her consort steady at her side, and many a bard sing many a song in their honour. She rules with fairness, her people’s champion, and the lands grown rich and bountiful beneath her glory. The people sing her name in the taverns and the streets, and no longer do they look for a saviour. No longer do they fear the forces of the dark._

_The lands are peaceful. The seas calm. Both beautiful and bountiful._

_It is noon in the realm, and the hours of darkness seem far away, the people free to love and laugh and dance through all the hours of the daylight._

_But daylight never lasts forever, and darkness always must fall._

\--

She watches them through her mirror, the warped, spotted surface twisting their faces into caricatures of themselves as the princess and her new husband move together. So sweet. So _romantic_. So terribly doomed.

_Shame really_ , she thinks as she taps at the glass with a long fingernail. _They’re rather pretty_.

“Are you enjoying the show, dearie?”

The witch drops her mirror and turns to the figure in her fireplace with a scowl.

“Would you begrudge an old lady a little entertainment?”

The Dark One smiles with his flame-lipped mouth, sparks flaring within his fiery eyes as he peers out of the smoke.

“Later,” he says. “But first…”

“But first,” agrees the witch, picking the mirror back up and running a gnarled finger over the mottled glass, a bloody cloth tight in the fist of her hand. “There’s those what must pay, and we shall collect.”

“Yes,” agrees the Dark One, his teeth flashing red in the flames. “We shall.”

\--

**FIN**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the final chapter! Posted once again by @Katie_Dub while Clare is busy with her smol human. Be kind, comment/kudos/like/reblog/generally show the fic some love. You can find it on tumblr [over here](https://mahstatins.tumblr.com/post/167880076376/heathens-1414)


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